Separate and Unequal

"The definitive history of the Kerner Commission, whose report on urban unrest reshaped American debates about race and inequality In Separate and Unequal, historian Steven M. Gillon offers a revelatory new history of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders--popularly known as the Kerner Commission. Convened by President Lyndon Johnson after riots in Newark and Detroit left dozens dead and thousands injured, the commission issued a report in 1968 that attributed the unrest to "white racism" and called for aggressive new programs to end discrimination and poverty. "Our nation is moving toward two societies," it warned, "one black, and one white--separate and unequal." Johnson refused to accept the Kerner Report, and as his political coalition unraveled, its proposals went nowhere. For the right, the report became a symbol of liberal excess, and for the left, one of opportunities lost. Separate and Unequal is essential for anyone seeking to understand the fraught politics of race in America"--

"In Separate and Unequal, historian Steven M. Gillon offers a revelatory new history of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders--popularly known as the Kerner Commission. Convened by President Lyndon Johnson after riots in Newark and Detroit left dozens dead and thousands injured, the commission issued a report in 1968 that attributed the unrest to "white racism" and called for aggressive new programs to end racism and poverty. "Our nation is moving toward two societies," they warned, "one black, and one white--separate and unequal." Fifty years later, Gillon draws on official records, never-before-seen private papers, and interviews with key players to offer an absorbing new account of the Kerner Commission's work and its vital legacies. Johnson, he shows, never intended the Commission as anything more than window dressing; when it took its mission seriously, he cut off its funding. And despite its unanimous report, the Commission was riven by generational, ideological, and racial divides that foreshadowed the fracturing of Johnson's liberal coalition and the reshaping of American politics in the years that followed. A vivid portrait of the possibilities and limitations of American liberalism at its apogee, Separate and Unequal is a crucial book for anyone seeking to understand our debate over race today"--