Separate and Unequal: The Kerner Commission and the Unraveling of American Liberalism by Steven M. Gillon

Author:Steven M. Gillon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2018-03-06T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 9

“LINDSAY HAS TAKEN EFFECTIVE CONTROL OF THE COMMISSION”

WITH THE COMMISSION’S MONEY RUNNING out, a small team of staff members struggled over the course of January and February to turn out a final report. Although the staff had produced drafts of most of the report’s chapters, they had yet to tackle what promised to be the most controversial section of the report—the recommendations for future action. Given the obvious differences in outlook between John Lindsay and Tex Thornton, the senior staff knew it was going to be difficult, if not impossible, to come up with a draft of this section of the report that every member of the commission could accept. For many of the policy recommendations, David Ginsburg turned to an outside economist, Anthony Downs, who emerged as one of the unheralded leaders of the commission. He proposed an outline, which the staff edited and revised through a series of drafts in January and early February. Downs’s ideas provided the general framework for the recommendations offered in the final report. As usual, John Lindsay dominated the debates over Downs’s proposals, pushing his fellow commissioners to support measures for even greater federal spending to aid American cities. But not everyone embraced Lindsay’s suggestions. One commissioner, Congressman James Corman, backed by two staff members, eventually argued that the commission should refrain from making any controversial policy recommendations. Corman and his allies feared the proposals would distract from the heart of the report: the detailed, factual evidence that white racism was at the root of the disorder plaguing many of America’s cities. With only weeks before the March 1 deadline for a final report, consensus remained elusive.

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