The President’s National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders released its report on Feb. 29, 1968, “condemning racism as the primary cause” of a recent surge of riots, according to History.com. Commonly known as the Kerner Commission, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed 11 people to uncover the causes of the riots and recommend solutions.
Fifty years later on Oct. 26, BYU’s student broadcast Newsline aired a special newscast as part of the Kerner+50 Symposium examining the state of race in America since the Kerner Commission. The Kerner+50 Symposium came out of an ongoing partnership between the BYU School of Communications and Morgan State University, a historically black university in Baltimore, Maryland, and also included West Virginia University. Both Morgan State University and West Virginia University also held panel discussions for the symposium, filmed at their respective campuses, and streamed to the other participating campuses.
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