The Essential Kerner Commission Report: The Landmark Study on Race, Inequality, and Police Violence

Recognizing that a historic study of American racism and police violence should become part of today's canon, Jelani Cobb contextualizes it for a new generation.



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 J...