In a conversation moderated by Dallas County Administrator Darryl Martin, Loessberg, who retired in 2020 as the county\u2019s planning director, traced the Civil Rights struggles and policies initiated from the Kerner Report to the police violence, political chaos and social unrest of today.<\/p>\n
![\"Rick](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/5XJRSLRI7JAXHCR3RVAXKZHJLA.jpeg\")
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Rick Loessberg, former Dallas County planning director, wrote a book about the Civil Rights struggles and policies initiated from the Kerner Report in the 1960s and how they echo today.<\/p>\n
Rick Loessberg<\/p>\n
Martin was a young boy growing up in Long Island, N.Y., when the riots of 1967 were playing out in 150 cities across the country. <\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of people felt what\u2019s next is probably a race war,\u201d Martin said of the time.<\/p>\n
By going on the ground into communities, the Kerner Committee members found the driver of such devastating unrest was not communism or criminals, as much of white America believed, Loessberg said. It was decades of inequality, segregation and dehumanization of Black Americans by white society.<\/p>\n
The committee, made up of mostly white politicians and citizens, came to unanimous agreement on recommendations for political policies and societal change through dialogue that feels like a foreign language in today\u2019s political climate.<\/p>\n
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At the event Thursday, Dallas County Administrator Darryl Martin said “Walking in Black skin is still difficult in the United States.\u201d <\/p>\n
Dallas County<\/p>\n
\u201cThey were committed to finding a solution,\u201d Loessberg said. \u201cThey did not call each other racists or fascists or woke or anything like that, but they had their disagreements.\u201d<\/p>\n
Their efforts ushered historic change but not overnight. Welfare reform took 20 years to pass. Americans saw the Fair Housing Act of 1968 that prohibited discrimination in home sales and rentals; appropriations for two of the nation\u2019s largest urban renewal programs; strengthening of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission; and the diversification of local police departments. <\/p>\n
While heavy on the need for institutional changes, one shortcoming of the report was it didn\u2019t delve deeply into the day-to-day sting of racism, Loessberg said, making it easy for white people to say: \u201cWell, it\u2019s not me, I didn\u2019t try to blow up a church in Birmingham so I\u2019m not racist.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fast-forward to today. The 2020 murder of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis that sparked mostly peaceful protests across the country. A president who shares racist images on social media with few consequences. National Guard members deployed to American streets again. An immigration crackdown that has resulted in federal agents killing U.S. citizens, deporting legal residents and housing undocumented immigrants in warehouses. <\/p>\n
\u201cWalking in Black skin is still difficult in the United States,\u201d said Martin, who is African American. \u201cI still feel eyes follow me when I go in certain stores, it\u2019s just the way it is.\u201d<\/p>\n
One recommendation of the Kerner Report was that if the National Guard were to be deployed, they need to be trained. It evokes other lasting questions, Loessberg asked, like: How do you account for our racial past without denigrating the Founding Fathers? How do you criticize police without appearing to condemn all police?<\/p>\n
With all the progress made over the decades, Martin said it can still feel like America consistently takes steps back. Is it going to get better, he asked?<\/p>\n
Being an American means being an optimist but not being passive, Loessberg said. It means voting not just in national elections but for local and school officials too. Difficult times have happened before but \u201cwe survived,\u201d Loessberg said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf nothing else, the last few years should remind us rights are never given, they have to be demanded,\u201d Loessberg said. \u201cYou can\u2019t take them for granted because people will take them away from you.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"National Guard troops patrolling neighborhoods. Law enforcement killing U.S. citizens. Racial dehumanization reaching a tipping point. This was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":173140,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[102,581,104,103,287],"class_list":["post-173139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas","tag-dallas","tag-dallas-county","tag-dallas-headlines","tag-dallas-news","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173139\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/173140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}