In 1991, 24-year-old Rodney King was savagely beaten with metal batons by four officers from the Los Angeles police department. The events of that night would change this country forever when video of the assault became public. The incident became infamous as this instance of citizen surveillance revealed shocking police brutality.

And while a stunned nation was riveted to news accounts of the event, smoldering racial tensions exploded 13 months later when a jury acquitted the LAPD officers accused of the assault on April 29, 1992. Thousands of people in the Los Angeles area rioted over the six days following the verdict. Widespread looting, assault, arson and murder occurred, and property damages topped roughly $1 billion. In all, 53 people died during the riots and thousands more were injured.

“The Riot Within: My Journey from Rebellion to Redemption” (HarperCollins, $24.99) marks the 20th anniversary of the L.A. Riots by providing King a platform to finally tell his life story. King’s story was one that grabbed media attention and forced America to face its racial chasm years before the killing of Trayvon Martin.

“With Trayvon Martin, there wasn’t a lot of looting and rioting, which is what happened to me,” noted King. “Here we are 20 years later, and they’re organizing things a lot better. You know, it all boils back down to racism. That’s the bottom line — there’s no other way to look at it. You can cover it up and say it was by the law, but it’s been pure racism for a long time. And, when the police can’t do their job, when they can’t kick butts the way they want to, they’ll leave it to the citizen’s hands. They’re tired of killing by the law, and you’ve got all these ‘wannabe’ law enforcement people who take care of business in their own manner. Time has caught up with us, and there’s no time for racism anymore. Like I say, the only difference you can make is with the young people.”

King says that he has long forgiven the police who beat him, but still marvels at the chain of events that changed his beloved city and nation. In turn, King dedicated the book (co-authored by Lawrence J. Spagnola) to L.A. “I dedicate it to the city of Los Angeles because of the hurt, the pain, that went through on the day of the verdicts,” recalled King. “So, I just thought I would give something back to the people. Especially for the 54 people that died in this area of California.”

While King has been lauded by some as a cultural icon, he described himself simply as a man who is happy to have celebrated another birthday. “I get chills up and down my body at age 47 that I survived all these years as a Black man. Now, you know, I haven’t been an angel over the years, but I haven’t been the worst person either. I’m always trying to move toward positive things. Once you get to a certain age, you look at life so differently. Things have to happen for a reason sometimes, but I really appreciate being Black and being alive.”

Contact staff writer Bobbi Booker at (215) 893-5749 or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .

Rodney King never considered himself a philosopher or phrase-maker despite the fact that words he uttered on April 29, 1992, became one of the iconic phrases of the 1990s in American popular culture.

On that day, during the height of the worst urban riot in American history, King, victimized by police brutality the previous year, reacted to that rioting then burning large sections of Los Angeles with the heart-felt plea: “…can we all get along?”

That riot, lasting six days, claiming over fifty lives and creating billions of dollars in damages, erupted following an all-white jury’s acquittal of the four white Los Angeles policemen charged with the savage beating of King on March 3, 1991, that an eyewitness captured on videotape.

King, 47, died this weekend, apparently the result of an accidental drowning in the swimming pool of the California home he shared with his fiancée’.

King’s April 1992 observation is another example of the phrase about wisdom often being found in the simplest of places.

Rodney King spoke in Philadelphia at the end of April while promoting his recently published memoir, offering insights into the context of that phrase forever attached to him and dropping some other tidbits of grassroots wisdom that those who should hear and act on will continue to ignore.

King said his “get along” plea arose from his upbringing in the Los Angeles area where he got to know people of different nationalities through the church his mother attended.

“It was hard for me to see the city burning during the riot … when I thought about the good times during my youth,” King said. “My lawyers gave me a statement to read but it wasn’t me. I spoke from my heart … what I felt that day when I saw the violence in the streets.”

King did not condone the rioting but understood the reaction to the acquittals that exploded into negative chaos in far in excess to another instance of segments of society excusing another instance of brutal lawlessness by law enforcers.

“There have been brutality cases over the years and police always get away with it. People were fed up with the brutality and violence,” King said during his book tour talk held at the African American Museum in Center City.

“In L.A. at the time police would use the rationale that Blacks were on PCP so they needed to be killed. It is scary how brutality has twisted the minds of people to the point where they think Blacks deserve mistreatment.”

Police abuse, from insulting verbal encounters to fatal incidents, continues to ravish America especially against persons of color largely because few offending police officers ever face discipline, discharge or criminal indictment.

In Los Angeles, 27 years before the riot producing Rodney King’s iconic reaction, another incident of police abuse triggered six days of deadly rioting in the Watts section of that city.

This past March, 20 years after that 1992 riot, police in the Los Angeles suburb of Pasadena fatally shot 19-year-old college student Kendrec McDade seven times, leaving him handcuffed and bleeding on the street instead of quickly taking him to a hospital for treatment.

Rodney King, during his Philly talk drew connections between police misconduct and the violent chaos consuming too many Black communities nationwide.

“When people view you life as nothing it leads to these killings [in Black communities]. Police do this. People look up to police. They see them killing people without punishment and now they are doing it,” King said.

“Police are too comfortable with killing Blacks. Now that feeling is held by Blacks who kill Blacks.”

No need to speculate on whether the powers-that-be will accept the observations of Rodney King about police misconduct being an element in the crime spawning matrix in Black communities.

America is too comfortable with myths even myths that easily melt in the glare of reality.

America, at least the power brokers and many in the media, incessantly push the myth that taxing the wealthy properly is counter-productive for the economy because its siphons money that the rich use to create jobs into the sinkhole of government.

Think about how many jobs that wealthy are not creating with the tons of tax-break cash they are dumping into political campaigns where the wealthy are nakedly seeking to elect politicians that will sustains their tax breaks to the detriment of society.

Wealthy Republicans aligned with the likes of conservative power-broker Karl Rove plan to spend nearly $1 billion to capture the White House and control Congress. Not a dime of that billion dollars planned for buying influence in Washington, D.C., will produce a job for an unemployed person in Watts or rural Wisconsin.

Another myth is that America — the world’s military superpower — needs to spend nearly a trillion dollars on national defense, spending that enriches owners of defense industries but has little impact on winning wars in places like Afghanistan where lightly armed insurgents have battled the hi-tech U.S. military machine to a draw.

A few weeks ago an editorial in the monthly newsletter of AARP (American Association of Retired People) advanced the interesting idea of redirecting a slice of military spending to improve education that will uplift the economy.

Buy several fewer $133-million F-35 jet fighters, using that money to purchase portable computers for every first-grader.

Ignoring reality doesn’t change reality.

Linn Washington Jr. is a graduate of the Yale Law Journalism Fellowship Program.

Just a few months ago, Rodney King was once again the center of attention as the world checked back in on the man whose videotaped beating by police sparked one of the nation’s worst race riots.

King had left Los Angeles behind, moving an hour east to a home where neighbors would often hear him splashing in the pool late at night.

King was found around 5:30 a.m. on Sunday at the bottom of the swimming pool at his Rialto, Calif., home.

His death at age 47 is being treated as an apparent drowning and there are no signs of foul play, but Capt. Randy De Anda said autopsy results would be needed to determine whether drugs or alcohol were a factor.

De Anda said King was only in the water three to four minutes between the time his fiancée called 911 and when officers arrived and pulled him from the water. He was taken to a nearby hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 6:11 a.m. The autopsy was set for Monday.  

It was a grim end for King, who symbolized the problem of police brutality and struggled with addiction and repeated arrests.

He spent the last months of his life promoting a memoir he titled, “The Riot Within: From Rebellion to Redemption.”

It was from the kitchen of his home overlooking the pool he would lose his life in that King conducted what would be his last interview on April 16 with The Philadelphia Tribune.

He spoke about the upbeat note his life had taken and the physical and emotional scars from the more than 50 baton blows that remained.  

“I have told my story many times, you know, in court, on the street to people,” said King. “To have a (book) writer, and for me to put together everything I have in notes, I thought it would be good for my grandkids and my kids to have something if I passed away tomorrow — something they can read that’s close to my words. And I say very close to my words because there was a second writer. It was very important for me to have my words out there, and in a book, so my grandkids and my kids can read it for themselves — especially if they see the videotape, which they will.” Almost in a whisper, King added, “I am so blessed that camera was on me that night.”  

In his autobiography, King described his uneasy feelings about the events of his life, especially in the aftermath of the Los Angeles riots.

Twenty years later, King still pondered the lasting significance of his simple yet profound plea: “Can we all get along?”

“For me, for me, for me: those words have worked,” explained King. “They worked then, and that’s just how I was raised ... It’s scary, and I can understand how people feel over the years, especially minorities because we’re always scorned or looked upon or judged. It hasn’t been an all-heavenly ride growing up as a Black young man. It ain’t what it’s all cracked up to be. You know at a certain age when you have to start watching your back just because of your color. It’s shameful and it’s kind of hurtful to know that once you get a certain age, this can really happen ‘cause it happened in the past. I think it’s very important that America always, always, have plays, and activities and reading so we can teach the young people how important it is for use to go forward. Because they are the future. All of us older, and that’s here before any newborn that’s born right now, we have that responsibility. Before the next baby is born, within the second that we’re talking, it’s our responsibility to educate as far as race.”

Throughout the 40 minute interview, King often self-identified as an “American Negro.” While the usage of the term “Negro” has declined in the post-Civil Rights Movement era, King wholeheartedly embraced the classification as a part of his personal legacy.  

“It’s holding on to my heritage,” said King. “It’s the first way I know how. A Negro American, well, a lot of work went into that. It’s a lot of pain and life-taking time that went on over the years. That’s what’s on my birth certificate, so I’d like to hang on to that one. African American is cool, but I’m a Negro American because of the work, the marches, the deaths, the whippings, the release of slavery — all that belongs to the Negro American. All our credit is still due, so before you call me an African American I want my credit as a Negro American. I don’t know how it’s going to go about at the end, but I’m working everyday on earning my respect as a Negro American here in this country.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Contact staff writer Bobbi Booker at (215) 893-5749 or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .

“Can we all get along?” Those famous words from Rodney King still apply to America today. It is 2012 and race-based hate haunts us daily. There is always something sensational to remind us that we have yet to overcome this evil.

The latest big indication that it still lives is the incident from Sanford, Fla. A child of God, a son and brother only 17 years in age was struck in the chest by a bullet. The bullet did not come from a gang member, robber or thug. It came from a “volunteer neighborhood watchman” — whatever that is.

Like the Watergate incident which took down a U.S. president, it wasn’t the initial act that causes us to scream. It was the cover up. What the authorities of Sanford did or did not do subsequent to the shooting is deplorable and leans toward racism.

First, they showed no regard for the family of Trayvon. Here is a corpse of a teenager with his cell phone in his pocket. They made no attempt to locate his family which could have been done in minutes via the cell phone. It wasn’t until his father called police that they informed the family. Secondly, they took the shooter’s word on what happened. Whenever a police officer shoots an individual his weapon is taken for testing; he is given a blood alcohol and drug test and then he is assigned to desk duty until a thorough investigation is completed. Sanford police took his weapon but did nothing else. In fact, they performed a drug test on Trayvon for some reason.

There are a lot of things that don’t add up. Why was this watchman following Trayvon who was walking directly home from a convenience store? The watchman’s 911 call sounds like someone drunk yet they never test him. He weighs more than 100 pounds over Trayvon’s weight yet he says Trayvon was beating him up. The police ignore the claims of Trayvon’s girlfriend who says he called her claiming a person was following him. They need to do a run on the shooter’s weapon to see if it has been used in other shootings. Why haven’t they begun a grand jury investigation? Why isn’t there an autopsy done on Trayvon? That might show the entry of the bullet and if he was shot lying on the ground as opposed to attacking the watchman.

This is a pure tragedy — but there is more to it than the great loss suffered by the Martin family. It is the reminder that Black, young men are at risk whenever they intermingle in the same environment as police officers or guards. Emmett Till, Rodney King and now Trayvon Martin are just a few reminders that if you are a parent of a Black male, you have much to fear.

I have four Black daughters. Not one day has ever occurred that I feared for their safety from police. I also have two sons, the babies, and there have been many times that my wife and I would seriously worry about their future and safety. The fear was justified. One of my sons was beaten by D.C. police officer and falsely charged. It took $20,000+ to get the false charges thrown out. The other son was given a false citation and harassed by a University of Maryland police officer which we also had to get thrown out. Their best friend escorted a white female student back to her dorm after a campus nightclub closed. The Prince Georges, Md., police department declared this to be disturbing the peace (interracial walking after hours). For this they stayed in a jail cell from Friday night to Monday afternoon. His family had to also pay big bucks to get it thrown out. Just about every Black family I know with a son has similar horror stories.

My wife and I are lucky. Our sons are grown now and have survived with their lives and no trumped up criminal record. There are too many of us who cannot say that. It is an American shame and, somehow, we have got to end this institutional illness. Perhaps we can develop a protocol for all correctional administrators to adhere to. A check list that can be used as a requirement for all police officers, guards etc. That will promote fair and impartial treatment for all regardless of race and/or ethnicity.

The time to end stereotypes and prejudgment is long overdue. Perhaps we should no longer hope for it but sincerely demand it. Something stinks in Sanford and we must expunge it from our society. May God bless the Martin family, and may justice prevail in Sanford. All individuals who have failed should pay for their transgressions. May this become an example of what happens whenever fair and impartial treatment is not applied to each and every citizen.

Harry Alford is the co-founder, president and CEO of the National Black Chamber of Commerce®. Website: www.nationalbcc.org. Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .

Rodney King, victim of the infamous videotaped beating by Los Angeles police officers, is the subject of the next episode of "Oprah: Where are They Now?" airing at 10 p.m., Tuesday, October 23 on OWN.

King made headlines in 1991 when he was beaten by police, and again in 1992 with the acquittal of the officers, which incited the race riots in Los Angeles. The network states that in his final interview, taped only two weeks prior to his untimely death on June 17, King, who is joined by his fiance' Cynthia, opens up about his alcohol addiction and how he felt 20 later about the cops who beat him and "the incident that made him famous."    

"I'm a different man than I was 20 years ago because of the experience I've had in life," King said. "The world knows me as a person that got beat up by the cops, but the real Rodney King is a 'can't we all get along' type of guy. I'm not the type of person that they have portrayed me to be over the years. I did have hate for the cops for a time, but I know the way my mom had raised me...if I walk around bitter and mad, I'm doing the same thing that they did to me. and that's not the way generations are supposed to leave the next generation.

"There's not a day that goes by that I don't forget the beating, but it's not in a negative way, like it used to be. It has turned into a positive way - it's part of history now. I wouldn't change the beating either, because if it didn't happen to me, then it would be a slower process of people being able to get along."

Also, Kato Kaelin, houseguest of O.J. Simpson, reveals his thoughts on Simpson today and what he said to Simpson on the day of the murders. The episode also features updates with Shannon Faulkner, the first female cadet at The Citadel, who won admittance into the all-male military college."

Contact Entertainment Reporter Kimberly C. Roberts at (215) 893-5753 or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .

There was always something hapless about Rodney King.

He entered the nation’s consciousness — and its conscience — as a shambling drunk, an unemployed Black construction worker who tried to outrun L.A. police rather than be arrested for drunk driving. The result was a police beating, surreptitiously captured on video, so profoundly vicious that the chief of police himself said it made him sick. In 1992, when a suburban jury, conspicuously bleached of Black jurors, acquitted four white police officers of any crime, the City of Angels went to h--l, erupting in one of the worst urban riots in modern American history.

Haplessness thereafter attached to King like a stink, as he bounced in and out of the news for domestic violence, drunken run-ins with police, driving into a tree under the influence of PCP. Even the manner of his death Sunday has about it that familiar odor of haplessness. King is believed to have accidentally drowned in his backyard pool.

If true, isn’t that about what you would have expected? Hapless could have been his middle name.

But there was a moment, a signature moment, when Rodney Glen King was not hapless. You remember it, of course: Los Angeles is burning, the death toll is mounting, property damage is approaching $1 billion, the National Guard is trying to restore peace, the Red Cross is trying to help the stricken, and there comes King, shaken and uncertain, agony on his face and tears in his voice, pleading for peace and asking a question deceptive in its simplicity:

“Can we all get along?”

There was something almost unforgivably earnest about that question, something guileless, naked, even innocent. It came with no smirk of mocking subtext, no nudge of ironic knowing, no wink of post-modern detachment. It came from the heart, and some of us did not know how to process that.

Perhaps that’s why they transfigured it, removed it from the realm of serious things, made it a catchphrase, a cliché, the punch line to a joke no one had told.

As a rule, history has shown flawless judgment in picking icons for African Americans’ struggle for human rights. It chose quiet, dignified Rosa Parks as the emblem of the fight against segregation. It chose handsome, prankish Emmett Till as the face of racial violence.

So perhaps King seems an odd choice as the symbol of police brutality. But there is a reason Shakespeare put wisdom into the mouths of fools. The fool could get away with saying what others could not.

No, King was not a fool. But he was a hapless guy, taken less than seriously — in part because he asked that question others would not. Yet that question, the one some of us tried to giggle into irrelevance, is the defining question of the American experiment. It follows us down 236 years of slavery, restrictive housing covenants, lynchings, suffragettes, Trails of Tears, English-Only debates, No Irish Need Apply signs, Stonewall uprisings, sexism, anti-Semitism, racism, riot, wreck and ruin.

Can we all get along?

King, a more reflective man than stereotyped — and his own behavior would lead you to believe — understood the unique symbolism his life and that question had conferred upon him.

“I sometimes feel like I’m caught in a vise,” he told the Los Angeles Times earlier this year. “Some people feel like I’m some kind of hero. Others hate me. They say I deserved it. Other people, I can hear them mocking me for when I called for an end to the destruction, like I’m a fool for believing in peace.”

It is telling that more of us seemed to deride his question than sought to answer it. Perhaps they feared what the answer would be. Perhaps they found it easier just to laugh it down. But if the man who believes we must all get along is a fool, then you really have to wonder:

What word is left for the man who does not?

Leonard Pitts is a columnist for the Miami Herald, 1 Herald Plaza, Miami, Fla., 33132. Readers may contact him via e-mail at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .

LOS ANGELES — Just a few months ago, Rodney King was once again the center of attention as the world checked back in on the man whose videotaped beating by police sparked one of the nation's worst race riots.

Rodney King would be the first to tell you that he was no Martin Luther King Jr. or Malcolm X. His lifelong bout with alcohol and drugs — battles that he always seemed to lose — and frequent run-ins with police did not qualify him for icon status. Yet, that’s what he achieved in 1991 at the age of 27 because of one video clip. It was graphic footage filmed by a bystander showing at least four Los Angeles policemen savagely kicking and beating King with police batons, landing at least 50 blows as the unarmed King was sprawled on the ground or struggling to stand up.

In the video, the officers were seen teeing off on King as though they were holding baseball bats or golf clubs. Several other officers stood around, doing nothing to halt the repeated assault on the helpless King.

More than any other event, the brutal beating of Rodney King, an unemployed construction worker, forced America to see what many did not want to believe existed — police officers, hiding behind a badge and a gun, brutalizing citizens who pose no immediate threat to them or the public.

King was found dead early Sunday morning at the bottom of his swimming pool at his home in Rialto, Calif. No foul play was suspected.

His entry into the national spotlight has its roots in an incident that took place in 1989. King robbed a grocery store in Monterey Park, Calif. He took $200 and was sentenced to two years in prison. On the night of March 2, 1991, following hours of drinking with friends, King was spotted speeding in the San Fernando Valley area of Los Angeles. When cops tried to pull him over, he tried to elude them by driving even faster, up to 100 miles per hour, fearing that he would go back to jail for violating his parole.

After a high-speed chase joined by other officers, King was cornered and ordered out of his vehicle. The two passengers accompanying him, Bryant Allen and Freddie Helms, immediately complied with the order to exit the car and lie face down on the ground. King delayed his exit and when he emerged, he acted strangely, waving at police helicopters that had been part of the chase and giggling uncontrollably.

Sgt. Stacey Koon, the supervising officer, fired a Taser into King’s back, causing him to drop to his knees. Officer Laurence Powell hit him in the head, knocking him to the ground, and continued striking him. Other officers moved in as well, pummeling King with their nightsticks. After being struck 56 times and kicked a half-dozen times, King was handcuffed and dragged to the side of the road on his stomach to await the arrival of an ambulance. He later reported that he had suffered 11 skull fractures, permanent brain damage, kidney damage and broken bones and teeth.

Four of the officers — Koon, Powell. Timothy Wind and Theodore Briseno — were charged with excessive use of force. Their trial was switched from Los Angeles to Simi Valley, a largely white community in Ventura County. On April 29, 1992, a jury that contained no African Americans acquitted three of the officers and was unable to reach a verdict on a fourth.

Los Angeles exploded upon hearing the verdict. At the end of six days of unrest, there were 53 deaths, 2,383 injuries and property damage was nearly $1 billion.

In an effort to end the violence, Rodney King appeared in public to utter his now famous, “Can we all get along?”

After the Los Angeles prosecutor failed to win a conviction against the four officers, the federal government obtained indictments charging the officers with violating the civil rights of King. Koon and Stacey were found guilty and sentenced to 32 months in prison; Wind and Briseno were acquitted. The city of Los Angeles settled a civil suit brought by Rodney King for $3.8 million.

Later, it became clear that the Rodney King beating was not an aberration.

• Feb. 4, 1999 – Amadou Diallo was killed by New York City police officers who claimed they thought he was reaching for a gun. Four officers were indicted for second-degree murder, but were acquitted.
• Sept. 2, 2005 – Following Hurricane Katrina, Henry Glover was shot to death while near a strip mall shopping for baby clothing. Two cops were sentenced to more than 15 years in prison for shooting Glover, tossing his body into a car and setting it on fire.
• Nov. 26, 2006 –Three unarmed Black men, including Sean Bell, were shot a total of 50 times by New York police officers. Bell, who had been celebrating at his bachelor party, died in the hail of bullets. Three officers charged with manslaughter were acquitted.
• Jan. 1, 2009 – Oscar Grant was shot in the back by Officer Johannes Mehserle while on the ground at a train station in Oakland, Calif. The officer was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter, but served only 11 months in prison.

There are dozens, if not hundreds, of cases similar to the ones above. Thanks to Rodney King, the public is not as quick to believe police officers who abuse their power and violate public trust. — (NNPA)

George E. Curry, former editor-in-chief of Emerge magazine, is editor-in-chief of the National Newspaper Publishers Association News Service (NNPA) and editorial director of Heart & Soul magazine. He is a keynote speaker, moderator and media coach. Curry can be reached through his website, www.georgecurry.com. You can also follow him at www.twitter.com/currygeorge.