Why read The Essential Kerner Commission Report?

Book cover of The Essential Kerner Commission Report

Book description

The Kerner Commission Report, released a month before Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1968 assassination, is among a handful of government reports that reads like an illuminating history book-a dramatic, often shocking, exploration of systemic racism that transcends its time. Yet Columbia University professor and New Yorker correspondent Jelani Cobb argues…

Explore

Topics

Genres

Black history

When you buy books, we may earn a commission that helps keep our lights on (or join the rebellion as a member).

Why read it?

1 author picked The Essential Kerner Commission Report as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Jim Carrier

Author

As a young journalist reporting racial unrest in Connecticut and elsewhere in the 1960s, I was stunned by a 1968 government report that declared: “Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, and one white – separate and unequal.” Its section on the media noted that except for crime stories, people of color were largely missing from television and newspapers – even in advertisements – and called on newsrooms, corporate boards, and institutions to use affirmative action to hire minorities. I took the Kerner Commission report to heart, and, as one of my proudest professional accomplishments, hired the first…

From Jim's list on understanding the South’s Civil Rights Movement.