The Riot Report

Coming to PBS in 2024⎪

112 min

When Black neighborhoods in scores of American cities erupted in violence in 1967, President Lyndon Johnson appointed the Kerner Commission to investigate precisely what had happened and why. Johnson expected the handpicked group to bolster support for his ambitious social welfare agenda. Instead, the commission went rogue.

Featuring interviews with the commission's sole surviving member, Senator Fred Harris, as well as several staffers, The Riot Report draws upon a rich but forgotten archive to document both the commission's work and its incendiary conclusions––resurrecting a past that today reads as prologue.