Charles David Ginsburg (April 20, 1912 – May 23, 2010) was an American political advisor and lawyer who was among the founders of Americans for Democratic Action and served as executive director of the Kerner Commission, which concluded that the rioting of 1967 was caused not by radicals or riffraff, but was instead a response to decades of pervasive discrimination and segregation, and which warned that the U.S. was "moving toward two societies—one Black, one white, separate and unequal."

His father ran a grocery store there, and when the Great Depression occurred, Ginsburg saw first-hand the effects that poverty had on families who were forced to cut back on their purchases.

[2] After graduating from law school, he found a position at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, with the assistance of Felix Frankfurter, interrupted by a one-year-long Supreme Court clerkship with Associate Justice William O. Douglas.

During World War II, Ginsburg served on the staff of the Office of Price Administration from 1941 until his resignation in 1943, where his hires included Richard Nixon, who had just graduated from the Duke University School of Law.

Recognized for his "keen wisdom and flawless honesty" and his ability "to analyze situations, get people to work together, listen attentively to competing points of view, and use his considerable legal skills to find common ground,"[3] he founded a law firm and became, along with the likes of Eleanor Roosevelt and John Kenneth Galbraith, one of the founders of Americans for Democratic Action.

Decades later, Ginsburg remained pessimistic about the future of race relations, citing the continued lag in education, housing and employment by African-Americans.

[2] The position was supported by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1980 with a 5 to 2 verdict in Kissinger v. Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press on the basis of the fact that the discussions were not related to the executive branch of government.