Racism Won’t Be Solved by Yet Another Blue-Ribbon Report
Elected officials instinctively turn to studying problems rather than solving them.
On January 29, 1943, Robert Hall was seized from his home in Baker County, Georgia. Three white police officers, charging Hall with the theft of a tire, drove him to the county courthouse. When they arrived, officers pulled him from the squad car and pummeled him with their fists and a two-pound baton for nearly 30 minutes. Hall fell unconscious. The officers dragged him feetfirst through the street to a cell inside the jailhouse where he would lay dying.
Four years later, when a panel established by President Harry Truman submitted a 178-page report on America’s civil-rights failings, the document included Hall’s story in a lengthy section on police brutality. “There is evidence of lawless police action against
