The New Yorker Radio Hour - Jelani Cobb on the Kerner Report, an Unheeded Warning about the Consequences of Racism

Episode Date: September 24, 2021

In 1967, in the wake of a violent uprising in Detroit, President Lyndon B. Johnson assembled the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders to investigate what had happened. This seemed futile: another panel to investigate yet another uprising. “A lot of people felt that way—‘We don’t need more studies, nothing’s going to come out of that commission,’ ” Fred Harris, a former senator from Oklahoma and the commission’s last surviving member, tells Jelani Cobb. But the conclusions were not typical at all. In the final analysis, known as the Kerner Report, the commission named white racism—no euphemisms—as the root cause of unrest in the United States, and said that the country was “moving toward two societies, one Black, one White—separate and unequal.” The report called for sweeping changes and investments in jobs, housing, policing, and more; the recommendations went so far beyond Johnson’s anti-poverty programs of the nineteen-sixties that the President shelved the report and refused to meet with his own commission. The Kerner Report, Cobb says, was “an unheeded warning,” as America still struggles today to acknowledge the reality of systemic racism.  Jelani Cobb co-edited and wrote the introduction to “The Essential Kerner Commission Report,” which was published this year. New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. So, Senator Harris, Mr. Harris, what would you prefer that I call you? Either way, it's whatever Senator Harris, I suppose. But a former senator asked me after I started teaching at the university, what are you students call you? And I said, what do you mean? They call you professor or senator. And I had to think of it.

I said, most of them called me Fred. Fred Harris is a former senator from Oklahoma, a two-time presidential candidate and a professor of political science. He's 90 this year, and he's the last surviving member of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders. Lyndon Johnson had assembled the commission to look into the causes of an uprising in Detroit in 1967. Offices, banks, schools, businesses, industry were closed down. The heart of Detroit was deserted. Deliveries were curtailed. Food ran short. all normal activities in the nation's fifth largest city were at a standstill. The commission's findings were stark.

In a document known as the Kerner Report, they said that America was moving toward two societies, one black, one white, separate and unequal. This was not at all what President Johnson wanted to hear, and he refused to meet with his own commission to discuss the report. The concise version has been republished and edited with an interesting. production by staff writer Jelani Cobb. The original Turner report was huge. It ran more than 700 pages.

And it called for sweeping changes to the infrastructure of American cities, to the ways that American institutions interacted with low-income people of color. For instance, they called for the creation of 2 million new jobs and 6 million new units of affordable housing. They wanted to revamp the welfare system. They wanted to eliminate de facto school segregation. They wanted to fundamentally change the way policing was handled, particularly in low-income communities and communities of color. One of the more prescient things that they called for was the diversification of the media,

which is a conversation that's still ongoing. And so the conclusions were hard for President Johnson. He knew, politically speaking, that it was just unpalatable, you know, for, most white Americans to hear that the problems, as the report said, the problems that faced people in these communities could be laid directly at the doorstep of white America. None of its recommendations were enacted. None of its suggestions ever became legislation or made it off the drafting board in a sense. It's possible that the Turner report is even more relevant than it was at the time that it was released.

When we look at the questions that arose last summer in the midst of the chaotic and angry protests that filled the streets of dozens, hundreds of American cities after the death of George Floyd, we were fundamentally examining the same questions that Kerner grappled with half a century earlier. and this report was the unheeded warning. I was happy to speak with former Senator Fred Harris about his experience being one of the 11 members on the Kernan Commission.

So you get a call one evening at home from President Lyndon Johnson. Can you tell us a little bit about that call and how the Kernan Commission came to be formed? Yes, at the height of one of the worst disorders of 1960. Soon it was announced that Johnson was going to have a national telecast and appoint the commission. So we brought a television into our living room and had some neighbors come over just to hear the president. And he called and he said, I'm going to appoint that commission.

He actually said, I'm going to point that damn commission you've been talking about. That was his exact words. And he said, I'm going to put you on it. he said let your search be free find the truth and express it in your report and he asked us to answer three questions what happened in these riots or disorders or violent protest secondly why did it happen and thirdly what can we do to keep it from happening again and again and then he said uh i want you to remember that you're a johnson man said, yes, sir, I am a Johnson man.

I'm standing up at a wall telephone in my kitchen, and I'm almost saluting. I said, yes, sir, I am a Johnson man. What do you think he meant by that? He just, he died, I guess, well, I don't know exactly,

but he didn't want me to go wild and being critical and so forth, I suppose. He then said, if you forget it, I'm going to take my pocket, and cut your blank off. He did not say, he did not say blank.

He said, you understand that kind of talk, don't you, friend? I said, yes, you? And Johnson later felt I did forget it. So the commission, you know, once it was staffed, held a series of formal hearings for 20 days. That's right. And you interviewed people from Martin Luther King to J. Edgar Hoover. Right.

Do you recall some of the people who testified in what some of the more notable or memorable testimony was during those hearings? I do remember Kenneth Clark, as you know, a famous sociologist. Psychologist, right. He was a psychologist, is it? Yes. He was very sort of skeptical about the whole thing, and it was kind of a downer for us. He said, you know, what's this commission going to do? It's just the same old thing keeps happening, and you make these reports, and then it occurs.

That's been the McCone Commission report about the watch riot for 1965. And a lot of people felt that way. that we don't need more studies. Nothing's going to come out of that commission. Can you give me a sense of what you think Lyndon Johnson's motives were in creating the commission? I think they were really sincere. He was deeply committed to do something about racism and poverty in the country. I think these were core commitments of his.

He felt very deeply about it. And as we as we know, as surely we know, he did more against poverty and against racism than any president before or since. And so it's really a shame that he wound up as he did rejecting the report itself. We're listening to former Senator Fred Harris talking with Jelani Cobb. More in a moment. What's fascinating about this is that, you know, the report is, you know, this incredible indictment, you know, of the institutional racism that had factored into, you know, what they kind of politely termed civil disturbances. Right. At that time.

But, you know, really, it was a preface to even bigger events that would happen because the report was published just about a month before Martin Luther King died. Right. And can you talk to me about, you know, that moment and, you know, what happens in the aftermath of King's assassination? Was there a sense that you all had been kind of shouting into the wilderness? The way we adopted this report was every word of it was read, who was first presented to us a segment of it in draft form by our excellent staff, headed by the wonderful David Gettigberg, now gone. but that was read aloud with it printed in front of us and then we voted on and so when we got to that stage where we said what the Negro as we said in those days have always known but white people

do not understand is that white racism calls these black ghettos and it's white racism that sustains it. Now, there were people on our commission who said, well, you know, they wanted to use words like intolerance or discrimination or whatever. We thought it was important to say racism, man. We thought it was important that we say it, particularly for black young people. we knew that oppressed people very often come to have the same believe the same bad stereotypes about themselves that the dominant community does

and we wanted to say to them you're not crazy you're in a system that where racism is systematic as a part of the system and we voted on that the chair of the commission Otto Turner had taken the position that he would vote only if they were a tie. But he voted with us more progressive members. And that passed by vote of 6 to 5.

Wow. You know, it's interesting because there's this paradox that the report and its recommendations are ignored by the president who commissioned them. but they are widely and wildly embraced by the public. The report is a New York Times bestseller. That's right. Was that response from the public a surprise? And what was the rationale of the thinking behind publishing it and putting out to the public with a trade publisher in the first place?

I believe it was Bantam Press that published it? We were a little worried that, this commission like this report might just be shelled or even suppressed. And as we approved a segment

of the report voted on it, we sent that segment to Bannam Books. And they were able to put it together in a really heroic effort and bring out the report the very day we released

it on March the 1st 1968, but the report was leaked and just a mad scramble when it came out. And we tried our best to stop the publication of it by the Washington Post, but they said they had it legally. And all of that caused us a lot of trouble so that the headlines were white racism caused of black riots commission sales. And I've said this several times, but my dad, who came from Mississippi,

it was a small farmer in those days, 68, southwest Oklahoma. He loved me, of course. He didn't quite understand what I was in. Bob did. But the way he heard that report, he almost used these words, was Mr. Harris, out of the goodness of your heart,

you ought to pay more taxes to help poor black people who are rioting in Detroit. And my dad literally said, to hell with that, I'm already paying too much tax and not getting anything out of it. And he was right about that. He did not know that we also said

that what we were recommending applied to everybody. white people, black people and other minorities, American Indians we said, Hispanic surname, as we said in those days, and other minorities, rural and urban. All of that we said. Do you think that was representative, your father's sentiments, do you think that was representative of how other white people view the commission and its recommendations? I think so. And there was a poll along in that time, even after the Turner report, when asked a question, Do you think that there is something like systematic mistreatment of black people in America? Overwhelming majority of black people said yes, but a majority of white people said no. And it's a shame that our 20 days of hearings were not public hearings.

and nobody even thought about it in those days, you know. Do you have a sense of why Johnson was invested in the idea that there was, you know, some sort of subterfuge or conspiracy, you know, whether it was from communist or what they would have called black militants at that time? Well, I don't know exactly, although a lot of people were saying that. I think Johnson's feelings were hurt in a way. you know, what's the matter with these people? I've given them the Civil Rights Act in 1964, and we've got the poverty program,

and here they still cause trouble. And, you know, he just felt in a way kind of betrayed, I think. And so it must be, you remember there's that old thing they used to call it in the South, the happy darky syndrome. Oh, wow. You know, white people said, well, I don't know. Our people, our black people are happy.

You know what? Sure. This has to be these outside agitators that are coming in here and stirring them up, like the N.A.C. and so more than those days. First of all, I said, there are thousands of Stokely Carmichael's and H.R. Browns that you and I have never heard of. And the conditions in which these people live and the rightful hostility they have toward the police, often the only aspect of the general society that they come in contact with,

is such that there's no telling what would happen or how long it would happen. You know, there have been dozens of these reports now. Certainly the Kernner Commission report, is the most comprehensive of them. But it almost constitutes a genre of government document that dates at this point more than a century of these examinations. How do you think we go from diagnosis to actually resolving these issues?

Well, I think we're in the process of doing it. You know, Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden got together after it became clear that Biden was going to be the Democratic nominee and worked out what came to be the Democratic platform. And it is by far. I'm a former national chairman of the Democratic Party. It's by far the most progressive platform in the history of the Democratic Party by far. And public opinion has changed. It's changed in regard to race, and it's changed in regard to what are real solutions to these problems.

The kind of conclusions we came to in the current report, and that's what's made the current report last. We really did tell the truth. You know, we could have said, well, we do a little of this and a little of that, and then maybe things will get better. We knew that wasn't true. And so we decided, okay, we're not going to ask what it'll cost or whether people are going to all agree with it or what. We're going to say what we know is the truth.

We have to do really big things and make big, big changes in American society and government. Case after case of these terrible use of force of killings by the police. All of that somehow has brought us to a time where, I mean, the country is split like hell, but the majority of this country, as we saw with Biden's election, now believe that we've got to do big things. Well, thank you for your time. This has been incredibly insightful, and it's such an honor to get to talk to you today. Well, thank you. It's the same for me, too, about you.

That's Jelani Cobb speaking with the former Senator Fred Harris. Jelani is co-editor of the Essential Kerner Commission Report, which just came out this year. You can read him on history and racial justice and much more at New Yorker.com. This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, and that's our show for today. Thanks so much for joining us. Be well. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tune Arts. This episode was produced by Alex Barron, Emily Boutin, Ave Carrillo, Riannon Corby, Calli Leah, David Krasnow, Gauphin and Putubuele, Louis Mitchell, Michelle Moses, and Stephen Valentino.

The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.