Nationwide protests. Racist discrimination. Militarized police. These were the characteristics used to describe America during the long hot summer of 1967, when riots swept through more than 150 cities. They still describe America today, as the government has responded to protests against racist policing and immigration raids with militarized police forces backed by the Marines and the National Guard.

It all sounds eerily similar to the America of more than half a century ago, when a presidential commission diagnosed the country’s problem: racism, particularly in policing, was causing widespread political unrest.

“When a protest becomes that broad-based — cutting across gender lines and ethnic lines — then I think you have the opportunity to realize this is a true political movement,” says Rick Loessberg, an urban historian and the former planning commissioner for Dallas County, Texas, and the author of “Two Societies: The Rioting of 1967 and the Writing of the Kerner Report.”

“This is not just a group or a segment of the population letting off steam,” says Loessberg, “which was what was one of the explanations that was used in the 1960s. This is something else that’s much, much deeper and much more significant.”

This week on The Intercept Briefing, host Akela Lacy speaks with Loessberg about what America learned — and didn’t learn — from our history of racist policing and political unrest.

Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

TRANSCRIPT

Akela Lacy: Welcome to the Intercept Briefing. I’m Akela Lacy.

President Donald Trump announced last month that he would end his deployment of National Guard troops to Los Angeles.

KSBY: Today the Pentagon announced that it is withdrawing 2,000 National Guard troops from Los Angeles.

KSBW: That deployment is now over. About 4,000 National Guard troops, 700 Marines were sent to LA during protests over immigration raids last month.

WDIV: The deployment happened despite objections from city officials and California Gov. Gavin Newsom.

AL: The news came days after a federal judge ordered the administration to stop indiscriminate immigration raids in LA.

From masked agents taking people off the streets into unmarked vans, to men in military fatigues on horseback stalking through an empty Los Angeles park, streets emptied as communities hid in fear of the next raid.

The images of militarized police and federal agents descending on the public were striking — and strikingly familiar. That’s because we’ve been here before. Not just in LA, but as a country. And that’s what we’re talking about today with historian Rick Loessberg, who has written extensively about America’s great wave of unrest in the summer of 1967.

That’s when more than 150 cities across America exploded in racial uprisings. Detroit, Newark, and dozens of other communities were convulsed by what became known as the “long, hot summer.” President Lyndon B. Johnson created a commission to figure out what was going on, and the resulting report — the Kerner Report — delivered a devastating conclusion: America was “moving toward two societies, one black, one white — separate and unequal.”

This pattern of unrest followed by national soul-searching isn’t new. From police beating Selma civil rights marchers on “Bloody Sunday” in 1965, to attacking people protesting police brutality in 2020, to shooting striking miners in the back during the Lattimer Massacre of 1897 to this summer’s protests in LA. We’ve been here before.

Joining me this week is Rick Loessberg, an urban planning historian and former planning director for Dallas County, Texas. Loessberg is the author of the 2024 book, “Two Societies: The Rioting of 1967 and the Writing of the Kerner Report.” Welcome to the show, Rick.

Rick Loessberg: Thank you for having me, Akela.

AL: So why are we talking about a report from 1967? What about this is relevant today?

RL: Well, it doesn’t take anyone very long who thumbs through 600 pages to discover that it primarily addresses the same topics that monopolize our conversation today: inappropriate police conduct and equitable economic outcomes; and then just a general lack of understanding and awareness, and a recognition of past and present discrimination.

AL: The reaction to racist policing was found to be a major cause of the unrest in 1967. You could easily say the same thing today as far as racist policing. “Border czar” Tom Homan just said on national TV that it’s perfectly fine for ICE to go after people based on their physical characteristics.

Police have also become more militarized since what we’ve seen in 1967, and we’re seeing the National Guard deployed for far less than it was deployed then. Some of the commission’s recommendations have taken shape in policy as far as diversifying the police. But can you actually fix racism in policing as it expands to all these other agencies and ensnares police and immigration enforcement or removals, or is it a feature rather than a bug?

RL: Well, any institution — any organization — is only as good as the people who are in it and who lead it. It’s obviously a monumental task. I think the progress that we’ve made since 1968, we’ve made substantial progress. You know, people ask me, is the glass half full or half empty? And I say, yes. But the reality is, if you just look at the last five to eight to 10 years, things have changed dramatically, and we’re seeing things that I know in my lifetime I never thought I would see.

Things that I have taken for granted that we’re America and this just does not happen here, that we’ve learned from our mistakes and maybe we have learned from our mistakes, but that knowledge is not permanent. You’re right about the militarization of police. One of the good things though, that has come out of the 1967 riots, and I believe the Kerner Report, is they made extensive recommendations about how crowd controls should be done.

When you go back and you look at some of the incidents in 1967, one of the ways they tried to disperse crowds then was they would literally use live ammunition and shoot over the heads of the demonstrators or the protesters or the rioters. Needless to say, that was not an effective way, and it ended up really just inflaming and making a bad situation far, far worse. They’ve learned from those things.

Police — almost at any medium to large size city level — undergo some sort of crowd-control training when they’re in the police academy and they have refresher courses. The National Guard,........

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