Preface

The summer of 1967 brought racial disorder again to American cities, deepening the bitter residue of fear and threatening the future of all Americans.

We are charged by the President with the responsibility to examine this condition and to speak the truth as we see it.

Two fundamental questions confront us:

How can we as a people end the resort to violence while build a better society?

How can the nation realize the promise of a single society—one nation indivisible—which yet remains unfulfilled?

Violence surely cannot build that society. Disruption and disorder will nourish not justice but repression. Those few who would destroy civil order and the rule of law strike at the freedom of every citizen. They must, know that the community cannot and will not tolerate coercion and mob action.

We have worked together these past months with a sense of the greatest urgency. Although much remains that can be learned, we have determined to say now what we have learned. We do this in the hope that the American public will uderstand the nature and gravity of the problem and that those who have power to act—at all levels of government and all sections of the community—will listen and respond.

This sense of urgency has led us to consolidate in this single report the interim and final reports called for by the President. To accomplish this, it has been necessary to do without the benefit of some studies still under way which will not completed for months to come. Certain of these studies—a 15-city general population survey of Negro and white attitudes, a special population survey of attitudes of community leaders, elected officials, administrators and teachers, a report onm the application of mediation techniques, and a further analysis of riot arrestees—will be issued later, with other materials, as supplemental reports.

We believe that to wait until mid-summer to present our findings and recommendations may be to forfeit whatever opportunity exists for this report to affect this year the danger ous climate of tension and apprehension that pervades our cities.

II
Last summer nearly 150 cities reported disorders it Negro—and in some instances, Puerto Rican—neighbor. hoods.* These ranged from minor disturbances to major out. bursts involving sustained and widespread looting and destruc. tion of property. The worst came during a two-week period in July when large-scale disorders erupted first in Newark and then in Detroit, each setting off a chain reaction in neighborims communities.

It was in this troubled and turbulent setting that the President of the United States established this Commission. He called upon it "to guide the country through a thicket o1 tension, conflicting evidence and extreme opinions."

In his charge, the President framed the Commission'i mandate in these words:

"We need to know the answers to three basic questions about these riots: —What happened?
—Why did it happen?
—What can be done to prevent it from happening again and again?"

The three parts of this report offer answers to these questions

Part I tells "What happened?" Chapter 1 is a profile of the 1967 disorders told through a narrative of the summer' events in 10 of the 23 cities surveyed by the Commission Chapter 2 calls on data from all 23 cities to construct at analytical profile. Chapter 3 is the report of the Commissior on the issue of conspiracy.

Part II responds to the question "Why did it happen?' Early in our investigation it became clear that the disorder: were not the result of contemporary conditions alone; Chapter 5 identifies some of the historical factors, that are an essential part of the background of last summer's outbreaks. Chapter 6 through 9 deal with present conditions, examining the impact of ghetto formation, unemployment, and family structures, and conditions of life in the ghettos, and the differences between the Negro experience and that of other urban immigrant groups.

Part III contains our answer to the question "What can done?" Our recommendations begin with organizing the 'unity to respond more effectively to ghetto needs and proceed with police-community relations, control of disorders, the administration of justice under emergency conditions, compensation for property damage, the role of the news media, and national action in the critical areas of employ-t, education, welfare and housing.

In formulating this report, we have attempted to draw all relevant sources. During closed hearings held from St through December, we heard over 130 witnesses, ining federal, state and local officials, experts from the, military establishment and law enforcement agencies, universities and foundations, Negro leaders and representatives of business community. We personally visited eight cities in ch major disturbances had occurred. We met together for days to review and revise the several drafts of our report. Through our staff we also undertook field surveys in 23 cities in which disorders occurred during the summer of 1967, and took sworn testimony in nine of the cities investigated and from Negro leaders and militants across the country. Expert consultants and advisors supplemented the work of our staff in all the areas covered in our report.

III

Much of our report is directed to the condition of those Americans who are also Negroes and to the social and economic environment in which they live—many in the black ghettos of our cities. But this nation is confronted with the issue of justice for all its people—white as well as black, rural well as urban. In particular, we are concerned for those who have continued to keep faith with society in the preservation of public order—the people of Spanish surname, the American Indian and other minority groups to whom this country owes so much.

We wish it to be clear that in focusing on the Negro, we do not mean to imply any priority of need. It will not do to fight misery in the black ghetto and leave untouched the reality of injustice and deprivation elsewhere in our society. The first priority is order and justice for all Americans.

In speaking of the Negro, we do not speak of "them."

We speak of us—for the freedoms and opportunities of all Americans are diminished and imperiled when they are denied to some Americans. The tragic waste of human spirit and resources, the unrecoverable loss to the nation which this denial has already caused—and continues to produce—not longer can be ignored or afforded.

Two premises underlie the work of the Commission:

•    that this nation cannot abide violence and disorder if it is to ensure the safety of its people and their progress in a free society.
•    that this nation will deserve neither safety nor progress unless it can demonstrate the wisdom and the will to undertake decisive action against the root causes of racial disorder.

This report is addressed to the institutions of government and to the conscience of the nation, but even more urgently, to the minds and hearts of each citizen. The responsibility for decisive action, never more clearly demanded in the history of our country, rests on all of us.

We do not know whether the tide of racial disorder has begun to recede. We recognize as we must that the conditions underlying the disorders will not be obliterated before the end of this year or the end of the next and that, so long as these conditions exist, a potential for disorder remains. But we believe that the likelihood of disorder can be markedly lessened by an American commitment to confront those conditions and eliminate them—a commitment so clear that Negro citizens will know its truth and accept its goal. The most important step toward domestic peace is an act of will; this -country can do for its people what it chooses to do.

The pages that follow set forth our conclusions and the facts upon which they are based. Our plea for civil order and our recommendations for social and economic change are a call to national action. We are aware of the breadth and scope of those recommendations but they neither probe deeper nor demand more than the problems which call them forth.

• See tables page 2-14.