In 1968 Maryland hadn’t yet been absorbed by the wealth of Washington. It was still a semi-Southern state, lying below the Mason-Dixon Line. Republican Spiro Agnew—later Richard Nixon’s vice president—had been elected governor in 1966 over a segregationist Democratic nominee. In the black areas of West and East Baltimore, the King assassination triggered four days of rioting and looting.

The conflict was so fierce that the Baltimore police, 500 state troopers and 6,000 National Guardsmen were unable to quell it. Finally the “insurrection” was halted when Johnson deployed nearly 5,000 Army troops at Agnew’s request. By the time it was over, six people were dead. Mr. D’Alesandro, who had considered running for governor, was so humiliated by the rioting in a city where his father has been mayor before him that he decided to withdraw from elective politics.

Earlier that year, the Johnson administration reluctantly released the report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, commonly known as the Kerner Commission. The report wasn’t to LBJ’s liking because it implied that his Great Society was an insignificant down payment on racial redress. The presidential panel—assembled to explain the 1967 race riots in Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles and Newark, N.J.—should have been called the Lindsay Commission, after its vice chairman, New York Mayor John Lindsay. America’s racial problems, the report claimed, could be singularly attributed to white racism: “Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal.”

Over time, the Kerner Commission’s view of racism became gospel in the media, academia and the Democratic Party. An intellectual Iron Curtain descended to protect black politicians—including ineffective ones like Mr. Cummings and even con men like the Rev. Al Sharpton—by denouncing their critics as racist.

(more…)