Today behind an invisible curtain, hidden in mounds of legal text, lives an insidious—and systematic—effort to return America to a time when average people, especially people of color, had no Constitutional rights.

Some of you may remember the Kerner Commission, but many younger members of our audience probably will not. The Kerner Report should be required reading for policymakers and anyone trying to understand how we got to where we are now in terms of the black experience in America, the history of the ghetto and government’s responsibility to its citizens.