President Lyndon Johnson formed an 11-member National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders in July 1967 to explain the riots that plagued cities each summer since 1964 and to provide recommendations for the future. The Commission's 1968 report, nicknamed "The Kerner Commission" because it was lead by Illinois Gov. Otto Kerner, concluded that the nation was "moving toward two societies, one black, one white--separate and unequal." Unless conditions were remedied, the Commission warned, the country faced a "system of …showed first 75 words of 781 total…

…showed last 75 words of 781 total…years ago. In 1964, only one in five white Americans had any black neighbors, compared to three out of five today. And five out of six blacks now say they have white neighbors. Critics say that many studies of black-white relations over recent decades have erroneously concluded that blacks are worse off in terms of integration into white society than they were at the time of the Kerner report. The figures, however, tell a different story.