Rodney King’s Finest Hour
Thirty years ago this week, Los Angeles was burning amid riots that ultimately killed 63 people, injured 2,383, and destroyed hundreds of businesses. And perhaps the last person in the city that anyone could reasonably expect to call for calm, comity, and forbearance—the person with more fresh cause than anyone else to be furious at the city—was Rodney Glen King.
Yet on May 1, 1992, King called a press conference in hopes of stopping the death and destruction. “I just want to say, you know, can we all get along?” he implored everyone watching. “Can we get along? Can we stop making it horrible for the older people and the kids?”
Little more than a year prior, after fleeing a traffic stop at high speeds to avoid a drunk-driving charge that would have violated his parole, King had been savagely kicked and, so it is hard to convey the sensation caused by footage of the King beating being shown on television. But watching it at age 11, I knew I had seen real-life evil for the first time, and would never again presume that the cops in any given encounter were the good guys.
