The Kerner Report turned 40 last Friday. Officially known as the "Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders," the 400-plus page document is perhaps best known for its "basic conclusion" on the first page of its 30-page summary:

"Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white - separate and unequal."

That theme was reiterated all last week, during symposiums held at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in Greensboro and at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

The occasion was the release of the "Kerner Plus 40 Report," a joint project of the Institute for Advanced Journalism Studies, which is located at North Carolina A&T;, and the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication and Center for Africana Studies.

The project's directors - DeWayne Wickham, director of the IFAJS; Tukufu Zuberi, director of the Center for Africana Studies; and Michael X. Delli Carpini, dean of the Annenberg School - sent reporters to seven cities where riots or civil disorders occurred in the 1960s. The cities were Birmingham, Ala., Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Tampa, Fla., Detroit, Newark, N.J., and Cambridge, Md.

I drew Cambridge as an assignment. Although I've had a copy of the Kerner Report on my bookshelf for years - it just might be an original copy, judging from the look of it - I was surprised at how much I didn't know. Here's what I learned while working on the project:

There is some dispute about whether what happened in Cambridge after Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Chairman H. Rap Brown gave an incendiary speech was actually a riot.

Peter B. Levy, an associate professor of history at York College in Pennsylvania, devoted much of his book Civil War on Race Street to the events that happened the night of July 24, 1967, when Brown gave his speech. Levy contends that what happened afterward was no riot at all. The Kerner Commission itself, according to Levy, concluded that what occurred was a low-level civil disturbance, not a riot.

There was no looting in Cambridge. There was only one arson - at the dilapidated Pine Street Elementary School, where several fires had been set even before Brown came to town. Although a two-square block area eventually burned and several black businesses were destroyed, several residents of Cambridge I interviewed said the fire might never have spread from the school to other buildings if Cambridge's Fire and Rescue Company had come in to put out the fire once it started.

The fire company was still segregated, even as late as 1967. The fire chief refused to send his men in, claiming they feared being shot by snipers. Nor would the fire chief release equipment to black Cambridge residents so they could put out the fire.

But Gloria Richardson Dandridge, who led civil rights demonstrations in Cambridge from 1962 to 1964 when she was chairwoman of the Cambridge Nonviolent Action Committee, told me in an interview that a riot definitely did happen that night.

"It was a police riot," Richardson Dandridge said.

She based her conclusion on the chain of events. Brown, she said, gave the speech he always gave. He delivered it from atop a car on Pine Street, the main thoroughfare in Cambridge's all-black 2nd Ward.

When it was over, a teenage girl who had attended the speech asked Brown to walk to her house near Race Street, which divided black and white Cambridge. Police officers were standing on Race Street, ostensibly to curtail any trouble. As Brown, the girl, and a crowd following them approached Race Street, a police officer fired a shotgun, wounding Brown. Gunshots were then exchanged between police and some 2nd Ward residents.

Brown was treated for his wounds and out of town well before - at least two hours before, by some estimates - someone torched the school. If the police had never shot Brown, some Cambridge residents told me, maybe no one would have started the fires.

According to former Oklahoma Sen. Fred Harris, a member of the Kerner Commission, President Lyndon B. Johnson might never have read the report. Johnson, Harris told me, was miffed that the report didn't give him enough credit for his Great Society programs and civil rights record.

Some black folks are stuck in 1967. I talked to Harris in Newark, where I'd gone to take photos of hearings Harris held for residents to talk about what had changed in their city since the '67 riot. There was the standard finger-pointing at "Whitey" and "Uncle Toms," and absolutely no attempt to answer the only pertinent question on the Kerner Report's 40th birthday:

Black America is now two societies, not only separate and unequal, but with values that apparently clash with each other.

What should black Americans do about that?

greg.kane@baltsun.com