Kerner Commission: Meaning (information, definition, explanation, facts)

The Kerner Commission was created to report to president Lyndon Johnson on the recent 1967 race riots. Nominally headed by Illinois governor Otto Kerner, its real leading spirit was John Lindsay, mayor of New York. Pessimistic in tone, its finding was that the riots resulted from black frustration at lack of economic opportunity, and that America was becoming two societies, separate and unequal.

The Kerner Commission report was released in the beginning of 1968. The April 1968 King riots either verify the report's predictions or reveal the report's impotence.