![]() ![]() “We will try though sacrifice and militant mass pressure to transform the commission’s report from recommendations to national policy.” When the Kerner report was released King was in the middle of organizing the Poor People’s Campaign, and he saw the Campaign as the way to truly address the crisis studied by the commission. King Calls for Action Against Poverty and Racism Cited in Riot Study Poor People’s Campaign Starts April 22 in Washington,” March 4, 1968.)) We will begin this campaign on April 22nd with the first wave of poor people.”((All quotations are from Southern Christian Leadership Conference, “Dr. for jobs and income and the right to a decent life. If you actually read King’s praise for the report’s findings, he argues it is a “prescription to life” and that “This report reveals the absolute necessity of our spring campaign in Washington, D.C. We just passed the fiftieth anniversary of the report’s release, and Mawas the anniversary of King’s response. ![]() Martin Luther King Jr.’s praise for the findings of the Kerner Report -more officially the Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders -is often cited as a significant endorsement. King would be assassinated in Memphis a month after writing those words, and like so much that emerged in the 1960s, the promise held within the Kerner report and the Poor People’s Campaign remains unfulfilled. Bitter experience has shown that our government does not act until it is confronted directly and militantly. He described it as “a physician’s warning of approaching death with a prescription for life.” But he knew that absent a grassroots movement, the report would simply gather dust on the shelf:Įloquence and analysis by themselves do not bring change. King saw the potential of the commission’s report, and a few days after its release, gave its findings and recommendations a glowing endorsement. The report argued for massive government investments in public education, housing, and jobs, alongside the ending of racist police violence and active anti-discrimination campaigns. The Kerner Commission found the civil rights acts and Great Society programs of the 1960s didn’t go far enough. ![]() These factors underlay the development and maintenance of the northern black “ghettos”, where residents endured extreme segregation, limited housing choices, concentrated poverty, and poor schools. Their report, issued in March 1968, argued that the riots were caused in large part by poor neighborhood conditions and limited labor market options facing black Americans as a consequence of racism and rampant discrimination in housing and labor markets. The report’s findings, surprising even Johnson himself, took a detailed look at the root causes of unrest in America and proposed solutions as bold as the ills confronting the nation. In response to Black rebellions in cities across the country, the Johnson Administration had assembled The National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, chaired by Illinois Governor Otto Kerner. In this politically charged environment, the Kerner Commission Report exploded onto the scene. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference were organizing a campaign of a different sort: the Poor People’s Campaign. In March, 1968, while much of the national media’s attention was fixed on the presidential election campaign, Rev. ![]()
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