Following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr in April 1968, unrest broke out in scores of American cities, with burning and looting concentrated in segregated Black neighbourhoods in Washington, Chicago, Baltimore and elsewhere. The disturbances followed years of earlier riots and the 1968 Kerner Commission report, which warned the nation was 'moving toward two societies, one black, one white — separate and unequal'. Many damaged commercial corridors took decades to recover and some never did.
The uprisings exposed the consequences of segregated, disinvested inner cities and shaped subsequent debates over urban renewal, fair housing and the geography of American poverty.
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