Short answer: text source

The Kerner Commission, 1968

Unit 4
4 points
About 14 minutes

You read one written source (sometimes two closely related ones) and answer three or four short parts: what the source says, its historical context, and connections to related course content. On the exam: Section II, short-answer question 1 of 3 (required); the three short-answer questions share a suggested 40 minutes and are 18% of the score. In 2025 and 2026 this question had 4 parts (A–D).

The question and its sources

Read the source, then answer parts A, B, C and D. Write a few complete sentences for each part; you don't need a thesis. In July 1967 President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, often called the Kerner Commission, to study the uprisings in American cities that summer.

Source

“This is our basic conclusion: Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal.

“Reaction to last summer’s disorders has quickened the movement and deepened the division. Discrimination and segregation have long permeated much of American life; they now threaten the future of every American. . . .

“Segregation and poverty have created in the racial ghetto a destructive environment totally unknown to most white Americans.

“What white Americans have never fully understood—but what the Negro can never forget—is that white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it.”

[Permeated: spread throughout. Implicated: involved, partly responsible. Condones: accepts or excuses.]

Source: Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (the Kerner Commission), Summary, 1968 (a US government report)

Suggested time: 14 minutes

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Part (A)

1 point

Describe one claim the Commission makes in the source.

Your answer to part (A)

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Part (B)

1 point

Describe the historical context of the source.

Your answer to part (B)

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Part (C)

1 point

Explain one way government housing or urban-development policies helped create the conditions the Commission describes.

Your answer to part (C)

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Part (D)

1 point

Using a specific example, explain how a Black Power organization responded to conditions in urban Black neighborhoods in the 1960s or 1970s.

Your answer to part (D)

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