Turning on the television in her hotel room, Lisbeth Gant-Britton saw Los Angeles alight in flames.
People were protesting on the streets of South Los Angeles, setting fires, breaking into stores and destroying buildings.
“It was like a war zone,” said Gant-Britton, who was a UCLA graduate student at the time.
Gant-Britton, who had just flown to New York for an educational conference, had left Los Angeles in a relatively ordinary state of calm. In only a matter of hours, the city transformed into a chaotic environment of devastation and trauma.
It all began 18 years ago today, when four Los Angeles Police Department officers were acquitted of assault charges against a black man, Rodney King.
King, who had been driving down the freeway, refused to yield to a traffic stop initiated by the California Highway Patrol. He led the police on a high-speed car chase, and tried to resist arrest after finally stopping in Lake View Terrace. Consequently, the police stunned King with a Taser and heavily beat him as he continued to resist the commands of officers.
Most of the assault was recorded on video by a bystander, which was constantly replayed in the following media coverage and trials.
The officers were all charged with assault and use of excessive force, but instead of holding the trial in Los Angeles, the intense media and public attention caused the trial to be moved to Simi Valley, a predominantly white area. In the 1992 trial, three of the four officers were cleared of charges of excessive force. Community members were outraged, perceiving the verdict as a biased decision in favor of the white officers. This verdict triggered a rapid chain of events, including protests, rioting and attacks on passersby.
The decision incited a variety of strong emotional reactions, provoking many city residents to take action. Many remembered witnessing the turmoil of the protests and rebellion, which occurred over multiple days, took 53 lives and injured more than 2,000 people.
“This community was in chaos. Buildings are burning, cars are burning, people are running into stores and taking things,” said Mary Corey, a history lecturer who was in Los Angeles when the riots broke out. “It’s war.”
Some people who witnessed the events took issue with the label “riots,” which was widely used in the media and general public. Gant-Britton, currently student affairs officer for the Afro-American Studies program, said the term “riots” is considered offensive to many people in the black community.
“You had a lot of … people who were ordinarily peaceable getting very angry and taking out that frustration in what they considered to be a rebellion,” she said.
Yet the fierce community reaction was not simply a result of the Rodney King verdict. Underlying issues played a fundamental part in the ignition of violence and protests in South Central Los Angeles, including economic imbalance, unemployment, distrust of police and racial tensions.
“What (the people) wanted to do was express their anger not so much about Rodney King, but about their own vulnerability to the police,” said Richard Anderson, a political science professor.
As a result of the riots and intense pressure, the four officers were retried in a federal court. Two of the police officers were found guilty, while two were still acquitted.
Despite nearly two decades of recovery, Los Angeles still possesses much of the same environment now as it did then, according to some people who remember the riots.
“The so-called “˜ghetto’ or South Central … is so separated by miles and miles of freeway (from other areas of Los Angeles),” Corey said. “Poor people are literally locked in a community where there’s not a movement back and forth.”
Anderson noted similarly that people still live in separate communities, with different ethnicities dominating different regions of Los Angeles or separate streets in the same area.
“I don’t think L.A. has become racially more integrated as a result (of the riots),” Anderson said. “This kind of racial and economic stratification is still characteristic of Los Angeles.”
Additionally, people have gradually forgotten about the Los Angeles uprising, particularly those who live in areas that were unaffected by the violence. Corey said for community members who live in South Central Los Angeles, the events “reverberate in their historical memory.” In contrast, those on the West Side are not confronted with reminders of the incidents on a daily basis.
“If the war doesn’t happen on your turf, you can walk away and pretend it didn’t happen,” Corey said.
Still, there is reason to believe that there has been movement forward, she added. The city has recently seen greater attempts to celebrate diversity and understand racial tensions.
“(There is) new dynamism out of the old tension,” Gant-Britton said. “It hasn’t changed as much as we would like, but it is definitely changing.”