In 1968, when the Urban Institute was founded, “our cities were on fire,” says Jamie Gorelick, chair of Urban’s board of trustees, in a video commemorating Urban’s 50th anniversary. “The degree of despair about what would happen in our cities and our communities was really palpable to [President] Johnson.”

Tensions from centuries of racial injustice and division had reached a boiling point, and the civil rights movement demanded urgent action from the government. In this setting, Lyndon B. Johnson founded the Urban Institute, seeking “to bridge the gulf between the lonely scholar in search of truth and the decisionmaker in search of progress.”

Johnson understood that building that bridge between action and evidence would boost the effectiveness and power of change. That bridge remains vital today as we face new and evolving forms of division, and we have yet to remedy the legacy and impacts of structural racism.

Read the full article about racial and economic equity by Robert Abare at Urban Institute.