In 1963, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights dispatched a document to President John F. Kennedy and congressional leaders, concluding: "It is now one hundred years seeing that this kingdom, lagging in the back of different civilized countries, abolished slavery. Yet nowadays, the descendants of these freed slaves nevertheless be afflicted by customs, traditions and prejudices that need to have died with the group wherein they flourished." Five years later, President Lyndon Johnson's National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders -- typically called the Kerner Commission after its chair, Gov. Otto Kerner of Illinois -- issued its document at the reasons of and destiny treatments for the race-associated disturbances that had swept the kingdom all through the preceding year.
