The ‘60s and ‘70s were wild decades for me (and many others). In the late ‘60s, I was a newlywed living in Atlanta, working in the day and going to Georgia State University at night. It was a thrilling time. But there was a lot of upheaval and I saw much of it.
My first job out of undergrad was as a community organizer in rural middle Georgia. It was quite an experience for someone who hadn’t seen poverty firsthand. Most low-income people in the area were Black, but many country whites were not well off either. When there was a racist threat to burn down my single-wide trailer with my family in it, I moved to the Atlanta poverty program.
During this time period, there were many civil rights protests in Atlanta and other big cities. Especially notable are the widespread protests of 1967. And then again in 1968 (after the Memphis assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.).
Credit: contributed
Credit: contributed
After the first riots, President Johnson (LBJ) established a bipartisan group, the Kerner Commission, named after Gov. Kerner, Republican, of Illinois who chaired the group. The “Kerner Report”, unanimously agreed upon by the Republicans and Democrats on the committee, was issued on Feb. 29, 1968. Back then, pre-Reagan and pre-Trump, the two parties were both of one accord about the need to ensure civil rights for minority Americans and help them to prosper after hundreds of years of oppression.
This report contained numerous recommendations to right the wrongs done to our African- American brothers and sisters.
Their recommendations fell into five areas -- employment, education, welfare, housing and policing.
The commission had numerous employment-related recommendations, including expanding public transportation to enable people to get to jobs, ensuring equal opportunity via monitoring of the number of complaints in specific businesses/industries, increasing the federal minimum wage and improving job training opportunities for minorities. It was also recommended that a million public-sector and another million private-sector jobs be created over three years, with the U.S. Department of Defense increasing recruitment in areas of high unemployment, plants going into “high poverty areas, and on-the-job training funded by the federal government. Plus, high risk loans to black businesses in ghetto areas”.
The elimination of de facto school segregation via specific strategies was detailed, including changing district boundaries and school consolidation. And the creation of special “magnet schools” to attract white students into black areas, as well as improving the quality of schooling received in high-poverty areas. Additional vocational education and higher education funding was recommended to permit low-income students to attend at no cost.
Regarding welfare, the commission advocated for uniform national standards and moving the entire cost to the federal level. And free day care for low-income people trying to work.
The commission recommended creating an additional 6.6 million housing units over 10 years for lower-income families. And placement of this housing “outside of ghetto areas”.
Finally, the commission made numerous suggestions regarding police reform. These included having better guidelines for officers, as well as outlawing “indiscriminate stops”, “physical abuse” and “harassment”. And enforcing these prohibitions via an external review board for complaints. Further, putting “the best, not the worst officers” in poor minority areas and recruiting/promoting more Black officers. Also, ensuring that crime in Black neighborhoods is treated with the same urgency as in white ones.
But too few of these recommendations were ever fully funded or implemented. No wonder we still have many of the same problems more than 50 years later. And with the current inability of the parties to do anything significant regarding bipartisan legislation to alleviate poverty and overt discrimination, there is little hope in sight.
Jack Bernard, a former health care executive, was the first director of health planning for Georgia. He’s a former chairman of the Jasper County Commission. Given events of late, he now describes himself politically as a former Republican.
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