When Black neighborhoods in scores of American cities erupted in violence during the summer of 1967 — Detroit notably among them — President Lyndon Johnson appointed the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (informally known as the Kerner Commission) to answer three questions: What happened? Why did it happen? And what could be done to prevent it from happening again? The commission’s final report, issued in March of 1968, would offer a shockingly unvarnished assessment of American race relations, a verdict so politically explosive that Johnson doomed its finding to political oblivion. Michigan premiere.