The Kerner Commission. Introduction and Chapter 1.

The National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, known as the Kerner Commission after its chair, Governor Otto Kerner Jr. of Illinois, was an 11-member Presidential Commission established in July 1967 by President Lyndon B. Johnson in Executive Order 11365 to investigate the causes of over 150 race riots throughout the United States in the summer of 1967.

The Commission sought to provide recommendations that would prevent the riots from reoccurring. The 426-page Kerner Report concluded that the direct cause of the riots was rooted in the social consequences of white racism, such as disparities in housing, employment, education and policing.