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Understanding the Controversy: The Kerner Commission, The Harvest of American Racism, and the Dynamics of Incorporating Social Science with Public Policy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 February 2022

RICK LOESSBERG
RICK LOESSBERG*
Affiliation:
Independent Scholar
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Abstract

The Kerner Commission’s report is regarded as one of the nation’s most important works on race. However, the earlier rejection of an internal staff paper (“The Harvest of American Racism”) because it was “too radical” left a “gaping hole” in the Commission’s plans (“Harvest,” which sought to use social science to explain why only some cities encountered rioting, was to have been the report’s “core chapter”) and caused a staff split that threatened its work. Much has been written about the challenges of incorporating social science and public policy with references about them being in separate worlds with different languages, schedules, values, etc. This article examines to what extent any of these challenges was present as “Harvest” was being written and reviewed. It then seeks to determine what influence any complicating factor may have had and what, if anything, could have been done to produce a different outcome.

Keywords

Kerner Commission“Harvest of American Racism”1967 riots
Type
Critical Perspective
Information
Journal of Policy History , Volume 34 , Issue 1 , January 2022 , pp. 116 - 139
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2022

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References

NOTES

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20. Wilson, “Social Science and Public Policy: A Personal Note,” 91.

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36. Robert Shellow, panelist, “Kerner Report at 50,” American Historical Association Conference, Washington, DC, January 6, 2018.

37. Gary T. Marx, interview with author, September 22, 2018.

38. No one exactly remembers how the paper came to be titled, “The Harvest of American Racism,” but Marx (in a November 1, 2019, email to the author) and Boesel and Shellow (in November 1, 2019, emails to the author) believe that it was Louis Goldberg who suggested the name (as Marx says, Goldberg “was the more learned and literary” of the group) and that the name possibly originated from “The Harvest of Shame” (a CBS News Special Report on migrant farm workers) and/or The Grapes of Wrath.

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40. Shellow, panelist, “Kerner Report at 50.”

41. John Koskinen, interview with author, October 24, 2018.

42. Jay Kriegel, interview with author, November 9, 2018.

43. Gillon, Separate and Unequal, 60–61.

44. Memorandum by Charles Nelson to Victor Palmieri, Stephen Kurzman, and Robert Shellow, December 5, 1967, Series 46, Box 3, pp. 2–3, Files of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, LBJ Presidential Library.

45. David Ginsburg, interview by Michael L. Gillette, November 11, 1988, Oral History Interview 4, p. 20, transcript, LBJ Presidential Library.

46. Victor Palmieri, interview with author, April 3, 2015.

47. Robert Shellow, interview with author, October 9, 2018.

48. Gary T. Marx, interview with author, September 22, 2018.

49. David Boesel, interview with author, October 3, 2018.

50. Gary T. Marx, “Inside the Tent: Some Recollections on Working for the 1967 Kerner Commission” (Paper presented by Glenn Muschert at 50th Anniversary Kerner Commission Report National Conference, Minneapolis, MN, September 6, 2018), 9.

51. David Chambers, interview with author, November 1, 2018.

52. The title page to “Harvest” contains a highly visible disclaimer typed in all caps: THIS DOCUMENT HAS NEITHER BEEN SUBMITTED TO NOR APPROVED BY THE NATIONAL ADVISORY COMMISSION ON CIVIL DISORDERS. When Robert Shellow was asked by the author in 2019 if this was added to give the Commission some “distance” in case “Harvest” proved to be too controversial, he said that it was senior staff (and not the research team) that thought the paper was too controversial and that the disclaimer existed because that was the Commission’s standard practice. However, a review of Commission files does not find this disclaimer on any other work except for another research staff paper (“Summary Analysis”) written by Shellow and his team that is discussed in Note 88.

53. Lipsky and Olson, Commission Politics: The Processing of Racial Crisis in America, 170.

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58. Kopkind, “White on Black: The Riot Commission and the Rhetoric of Reform,” in The Politics of Riot Commissions, 386.

59. Lipsky and Olson, Commission Politics: The Processing of Racial Crisis in America, 183.

60. Robert Shellow, interview with author, September 22, 2018.

61. Shellow, panelist, “Kerner Report at 50.”

62. Gary T. Marx, interview with author, June 15, 2017.

63. Marx, “Inside the Tent,” 16.

64. Robert Shellow, interview with author, March 23, 2016.

65. David Chambers, interview with author, November 1, 2018.

66. Senior staff had sought to stress that studies and preliminary drafts be grounded in fact and that provocative statements had to be avoided. In fact, one week before “Harvest” was completed, staff was again reminded “to avoid unsupported generalities and loose and discursive writing” (Gillon, Separate and Unequal, 160). Ironically, Shellow also remembers being told, “play it straight, don’t speculate. If you don’t know, say you don’t know, and keep your conclusions tight” (Robert Shellow, interview with author, October 9, 2018).

67. Gillon, Separate and Unequal, 129–30, 154–55; Shellow, “Recollections—Robert Shellow,” 118; Lipsky and Olson, Commission Politics: The Processing of Racial Crisis in America, 183.

68. Shellow, “Recollections—Robert Shellow,” 118.

69. Shellow, “Recollections—Robert Shellow,” 118; Gillon, Separate and Unequal, 155; Lipsky and Olson, Commission Politics: The Processing of Racial Crisis in America, 183.

70. David Chambers, interview with author, November 1, 2018.

71. John Koskinen, interview with author, October 24, 2018.

72. David Chambers, interview with author, November 1, 2018.

73. Rick Loessberg, “‘Why Wouldn’t I Have Asked Him?’ Herbert Gans, Chapter 9 of the Kerner Report, and the Resolution of a Dilemma,” The Review of Black Political Economy 46, no. 4 (December 2019): 264.

74. Gillon, Separate and Unequal, 74.

75. Shellow, “Recollections—Robert Shellow,” 120.

76. David Boesel, interview with author, October 3, 2018.

77. Memorandum by David Ginsburg to the Commission, “Summary of Current Commission Research Programs,” October 31, 1967, Series 47, Box 6, Files of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders.

78. Gary T. Marx, interview with author, September 22, 2018; Gillon, Separate and Unequal, 74.

79. Such a situation could explain why the visits of senior staff are not regarded by the research team as being especially helpful or memorable. Shellow recalls these visits as producing “unpredictable effects on us, ranging from a feeling of friendly encouragement to annoyance at impatient prodding (Shellow, “Recollections—Robert Shellow,” 120). Of the senior staff that would stop by, Boesel only remembers Stephen Kurzman, the Commission’s deputy director for operations, but to Boesel, “he was someone who was just in another office” (interview with author, October 3, 2018).

80. Gary T. Marx, interview with author, June 15, 2017.

81. Gary T. Marx, interview with author, September 22, 2018.

82. Weiss, “Improving Linkage between Social Research and Public Policy,” 44.

83. Robert Shellow, interview with author, October 9, 2018.

84. Shellow, “Recollections—Robert Shellow,” 121.

85. Marx, “Inside the Tent,” 16.

86. David Ginsburg, interview by Michael L. Gillette, November 11, 1988, Oral History Interview 4, p. 20, transcript, LBJ Presidential Library.

87. Boesel, “David Boesel—Recollections,” 129.

88. It appears that senior staff’s decision to not risk whether the research team could suitably revise “Harvest” was appropriate. In 2018 interviews with the author, Boesel and Shellow separately estimated that it would have taken thirty to sixty days to revise “Harvest,” a schedule that likely would not have worked because the Commission only had a total of about ninety days to complete all of its work. Also, despite the consternation that “Harvest’s” last chapter generated, a December 20, 1967, version of the paper titled, “Summary Analysis” (Series 46, Box 7, Files of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders), not only continues to contain this problematic chapter in its entirety, but it is now the first chapter of this paper (it should be noted that neither Sears, nor Shellow, nor Marx, nor Boesel remembers this document, which is basically a rearranged version of “Harvest” with better transitions; however, Shellow referenced it as being a research team product in a January 17, 1968, memo to Ginsburg and Palmieri (Series 46, Box 7, Files of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders).

89. David Chambers, interview with author, November 1, 2018.

90. David Ginsburg, Oral History Interview 4, p. 20, transcript.

91. Boesel, “David Boesel—Recollections,” 130.

92. David Boesel, interview with author, October 3, 2018.

93. John Koskinen, interview with author, October 24, 2018.

94. Meeting of National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, August 1, 1967, transcript, Series 1, Box 1, p. 3, Files of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, LBJ Presidential Library.

95. Shellow, “Recollections—Robert Shellow,” 113.

96. Herman, The Romance of American Psychology, 216.

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