Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

This day July July 27th, 1967, President Linden B Johnson establishes the National Advisory Commission

on Civil Disorders, also known as the Kerner Commission, after its chair, Governor Kerner of Illinois.

This Commission is in response to what's known as the Long Hot Summer of 1967,

a summer marked by rioting, violence, civil unrest, protest. of the country. There of course had been riots in Watson, 1965, Chicago, 66, Newark, 67, lots of unrest going on in this era.

And there were riots in Detroit as the Commission first gathered to meet.

So, you know, we will get into all of this, but I will say that the

Kerner Commission's results are notable for one, how frankly they painted a picture of

why black and brown communities were frustrated, and

too, how quickly its findings were generally buried and spun and in many ways lost to history.

But not entirely lost to history because we are talking about it today but more importantly there is a new release of the

Kerner Commission report and included in there some writing on some lessons for today and it is put together by

Jalani Cobb staff writer at the New Yorker professor at Columbia

Journalism School and our special guest here today.

So Jalani, welcome to the show.

We've been wanting to have you on for a while so thanks for doing this.

Thank you. I'm happy to be here.

And of course I'm joined as always by Nicole Hemm of Columbia and Kelly Carter Jackson of

Wellesley. Hello there. Hey there. Hello Jody. So, Jelani I hinted a little bit at that timeline of how this commission comes

together. Johnson convenes it in the summer 67 riots still going on in parts of the

country. You know we're having such a fierce debate right now about

...