April 29, 1992, was the start of the L.A. riots, one of the most destructive civil disturbances in American history. We begin a two-part special today with a look back at what led up to it — and what lessons we should have learned.
April 29, 1992. A date that forever changed Los Angeles. Six days of chaos erupted after the acquittal of four police officers in the videotaped beating of Rodney King, an unarmed Black motorist. This is the first of two episodes on the 30th anniversary of the L.A. riots.
Today, Black, Latino and Asian communities reflect on the uprising. We also discuss the racial reckoning of the L.A. Times newsroom in its aftermath. Read the transcript.
Host: Gustavo Arellano
Guests: L.A. Times columnists Sandy Banks and Frank Shyong
More reading:
Column: What we got wrong about Black and Korean communities after the L.A. riots
Column: He was murdered during the L.A. riots. We can’t forget Latinos like him
Gustavo: Quick warning…the N word is used in some archival tape in this episode.
Gustavo: April 29th, 1992.
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A date that forever changed Los Angeles.
TAPE: Rodney King says at least one police officer called him a nigger just after he was kicked in the head while on the ground,
Six days of chaos erupted after the acquittal of four police officers in the beating of Rodney King, an unarmed black motorist.
TAPE: king said he had been asked sarcastically, how do you feel after being kicked? King said he replied by half coughing out the blood in his mouth. Then king said, a police officer said, we're going to kill you nigger. King said that remark was the only reason he did get up and try to run. But he said he was instantly hit in the head with a Baton and went down again. King said, officers then taunted him by saying killer killer. How do you feel killer while they hit him.
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I'm Gustavo. You're listening to the times daily news from the LA times.
It's Thursday, April 28th, 2022.
This is the first of two episodes on the 30th anniversary of the LA riots.
Today, Black, Latino, and Asian communities reflect on the uprising. And we also discuss a racial reckoning in the LA times newsroom that happened in its aftermath.
TAPE: BEAT
Gustavo: Joining me today or my fellow LA times, columnists, Sandy banks and Frank Sean. Welcome to the both of you.
Sandy: Thank you.
Frank: Thank you.
Gustavo: Sandy. I want to start with you because you covered the riots in real time, but before we get to what happened, it's important to remember what were the issues leading up to April 29th, especially with the Black community.
Sandy: You're right, Gustavo. It was a very different time from now. Crime was out of control in south LA. We had crack cocaine. We had a lot of gangs and drugs,// There was a lot of tension between the community and the police. The police were seen as the enemy. And then there was a lot of protests and all about the lack of resources in the community. There were too many liquor stores, not enough grocery stores, prices were high. And on top of that, then we had the Latasha Harlins killing at a liquor store in the community and a trial in which the grocer who shot her was convicted of manslaughter. But given probation by a white female judge, who said she'd suffered enough and that incensed the community. But still there were no riots, no violence. But then we had Rodney King and when the tape of that beating came out and went around the world, things just exploded
tape: what do we want? justice!
Sandy: An hour of that verdict. There was rampaging in downtown.
Gustavo: And I think people forget, especially if you weren’t born or living in that era, that the //time between the Rodney King beating the tape and the acquittal was about a year. So you had all this tension just simmering.
Sandy: It was just a spark that, that couldn't be extinguished.
Gustavo: I was 14 at the time, and I just remember all the anger, Frank, you were even younger than me and in Tennessee at the time.// But one of the things that you've written about a lot in your columns, was this alleged friction between the Korean and Black community. And it really came to a head the year before the riots, when a Korean liquor store owner, Soon Ja Du when she shot and killed 15 year old Latasha Harlins a black girl.
Frank: But I guess when you talk to Korean reporters reporting on these issues at the time, the framing also confined the racial issue of the LA riots to just these communities. And it was kind of this two dimensional picture, you know, soon John do's sentencing was convening. Politically, because it was a racial issue in which the LAPD was not at fault. //You know, it was a palatable narrative because it was a racial conflict for which white people could not be directly blamed. //And it was an answer when people were looking for answers, you know. The timing was convenient.
Gustavo: Soon Ja du was convicted of killing Latasha Harlins and no small part because of the video footage of the scene.
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Gustavo: And that just brought racial tensions to ahead right before Rodney king.
Frank: Yeah. Um, some people say like a tale of two videotapes, right? The CCTV footage of// soon jaw do shooting Latasha Harlins //and// the video of the Rodney King beating.// The CCTV footage shows a violent exchange between the shopkeeper, Sundar Dew and the teenager Latasha Harlins, who had placed a bottle of juice in her backpack. And her left hand, she had $2 and she was coming up to pay. But Soon Ja Du reached over the counter and grabbed her sweater and pulled her over. And that's when the fight began. And, uh, Soon Ja Du was knocked down a few times and then came back up with a gun and this Latasha placed the orange juice on the counter and walked out of the shop. She was shot in the back of the head by Soon Ja Du.
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Frank: But the Soon Ja Du shooting was not an isolated phenomenon. There was frequent shootings of Korean shopkeepers and by Korean shop keepers of their customers and boycotts organizing in the aftermath of the Latasha Harlins shooting. And so there are these economic pain points; Korean Americans owning, you know, the hair and beauty supply stores and swap meets primarily patronized by black and brown people. So, you know, the Black and Korean conflict described, you know, real friction between B lack populations and Korean shopkeepers all over the United States.
Sandy: I think that the Korean shopkeepers became a symbol, a reflection of a community that had been disinvested in for generations. Because it's important to remember in 1965 liquor stores were also a big issue
Gustavo: 1965, that was, of course the Watts riot. //
Sandy: Yes. They were mostly owned by Jews. And so it was always, it's not us owning things in our own community. //Then they were at specific shopkeepers. And so, you know, the Koreans became kind of the. For a long simmering anger that had nothing to do with them.
Gustavo: I just remember all the television stations immediately switched on. You see fires, you see people looting the stores. For me though, the biggest surprise was just seeing so many Latinos being part of it. And I say this with shame because a lot of us were saying, oh, we're better. We're better than that, which is like total coded anti-blackness and ignorant because those of us who weren't living in South LA hadn't realized that the area was already majority Latino or getting to be majority Latino.
Sandy: Yes, it was, there were like equal opportunity looting because all of the people in south Los Angeles had been disenfranchised financially and, you know, in many ways. And so now you have people going after the Safeways and the shoe stores and // the looters were taking things like diapers and formula. // Even the police officer said, I can't bother them. You know, these are people who are stealing necessity in a moment of opportunity and in a moment of anger. Because I know many that tingles felt that could have been us //that very easily could have been us when that side. It was shocking to some people, but it was a very human reaction to an inhumane decision.
Gustavo: I spoke to Area Montez Rodriguez. She's the vice president of a nonprofit down in south LA called community coalition. She's also native of south LA and her memories of the riot are vivid.
Rodriguez: Well, so, you know, my brother, we got in his pickup truck and we started driving and we saw a lot of Latino immigrants that were looting our grocery store.// People were coming out with diapers, with milk, with basic essentials. And// there were stores where people were taking out televisions and //technology equipment.
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Rodriguez: And what I remember was that when we got back to our house, One of our neighbors who was black and whose family members lived on the streets. So they have multiple homes that they owned said, we are not going to bring any of the looting onto this street.
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Rodriguez: I just remember thinking like, that's right. Even though this injustice happened, we can't be burning our neighborhood down. We can't be looting stores and he was communicating a sense of pride for our street.
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Gustavo: More of the LA riots after the break.
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Gustavo: Frank, Sandy. when do you remember seeing the Rodney King videotape for the first time?
Frank: The Rodney King video, uh, landed in my consciousness at the same time that there were so many different examples of police brutality in the news from Trayvon Martin to the uprisings in Ferguson and all of that.
Sandy: Seeing the video was it kind of a validation. It was painful to watch, but it was kind of validation. But it's also important to know that it wasn't just beatings that had the Black community so exhausted and incensed. It was the daily indignities. Like even my husband who’s Black, we live in the valley, Northridge, was stopped more often than he could count by police. Just want to say, you know, where are you going? Like, what are you doing now? And it just the daily indignities that motorists of color, and it happened to Latinos too, they had to put up with. And so seeing the, the video was like showing to the world what we already knew.
Gustavo: Yeah.// Everyone was just disgusted by it. And so it wasn't really much of a surprise that the LA district attorney at the time charges, the police officers involved. Do you think people were surprised though, Sandy, that they were acquitted?
Sandy: Oh, yeah. The Seminole decision was moving the trial to see me valley, which is where. Many many, many Los Angeles police officers live that's considered, you know, their stomping ground. And so you were not going to get a jury that was representative of the city of Los Angeles,// so that alarmed some people. And I think there were a lot of people that said, oh, there's no way we're going to get a conviction out there. But most people and our polls showed that most Black people particularly felt okay about it. They were convinced that once you see this video, there's no way you can not convict these officers. //
TAPE: The defense insists that it's more important. What the officer's thought than what they did. Defense attorneys don't admit the officers violated police policy, but even if they did the lawyer say that does not mean they violated King's civil rights.
Sandy: Um, I would say it was a shock. And people gathered very quickly to protest it. They left their jobs, they walked out of whatever they were doing and they showed up at police headquarters to protest and to throw rocks and to vent their anger.
Gustavo: Yeah, the protests at first were just angry, but then you just started seeing violence. // One of the most lasting images of the riots for many people is a Reginald Denny. He was a white truck driver. He was dragged out in the corner of Florence and Normandy and not just beaten, but had a cinderblock thrown at his head and people celebrating this was happening. That was just so horrific.
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Sandy: That was horrific. And it was particularly horrific because it was filmed by news crews, helicopters who were above and they could really zoom in. And so that also went out around the world immediately. And I can remember us standing in the newsroom, watching it happen in real time. And, you know, and the young reporters, she was like, this is what I'm going out into. And I always wondered is that why they didn't want to send white reporters down there. //
Frank: Yeah. When I think of the Reginal Denny clip, I think of how many times I've seen it. You know, I think I've probably seen it as many times as the Rodney King clip.
Gustavo: We talk about Reginald Denny and he's getting beaten, but another person that was beaten just an hour afterwards, almost as savagely was a watermelon immigrant named Fidel Lopez. And his story was basically forgotten. Like it definitely did not get the coverage and it was also recorded live at the same time as well.
Sandy: Yeah. I remember that. Yeah. I remember that. And, and I remember the stories of the people who helped were not told either. I mean, there were lots of people there who were dragging these people out of harm's way.
TAPE: Reginald Denny describes his trip through Florence and Normandy. He first saw chaos at the intersection. Then he was attacked. Here he is questioned by prosecutor Janet Moore. Do you have any recollection of the events after that being really. I mean, almost like gasping a last breath kind of thing, you know, where probably my heart was pounding like crazy. Cause it was very unnerving, I guess, would be a good way of putting it.
Frank: I believe his eventual rescuer protector was a Black man who saw what was happening on the TV and ran out of his home to save this man. Um,
Gustavo: Sandy. Where were you when the verdict was announced and what scenes from the riots are seared in your mind?
Sandy: I was at my desk, like everyone in the newsroom, we were all watching television. Cause they had announced the verdict was about to come down. And um, it's even still hard to talk about now because. I couldn't imagine that an entire jury would, would vote to acquit. I thought either they would convict or there would be a hung jury. So I just remember when the verdict was announced, feeling dizzy and, and feeling like someone had physically punched me in the chest. Like I couldn't breathe. And it went silent in my part of the newsroom and I was the only black report. In that little area then, and I could see my colleagues' faces just went ashen. Um, no one knew what to say. It was, it was a shock. And you know, your first thought as a reporter is usually, okay, what am I going to do now? You know, what am I going to write about? What am I going say? But I couldn't even think about that. I actually stood up and packed my bags and walked out of the newsroom and, and I would never see myself doing that. Turning away from such a great story.// It was an emotional, and even it felt like a physical blow.
Gustavo: Frank what's your reaction to all of it?
Frank: Well, I think like, as an Asian-American I'm most effected by his, his house Soon Ja Du kind of became the face of racism for the LA riots, even more so than the LAPD.// It's almost as if. You know, white racism kind of has existed behind this rhetorical fortress //and this timidity with respect to characterizing white racism, leads to headlines like, you know, racially-tinged shooting. And nowadays, you know, we're all sort of more aware that, racism is a part of a system that keeps us all down. That racism is not only committed by racists and people in KKK hoods. It's a part of our society that's reflected in institutions and discourse and. All of us are capable of participating in actions with racist consequences.
Sandy: And you know, what's ironic to Frank is when you look back on this, Blacks and Koreans were victims in much the same way because the police made a conscious decision not to go in and stop the violence, stop the looting. The word traveled was that the chief didn't want to have any more videos of Black people being beaten. So let's just stand back and leave it alone. And so Korean shop owners who are, who many lost everything, lost their livelihoods and have never recovered were penalized by that because the government did not come to their aid as victims and the government did not come to the aid of Black people. So we were both let down by the government that we, you know, expected and counted on to help us.
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Frank: And what I worry about is, is it a self fulfilling prophecy? //Preventing us from seeing blacks and Koreans as individuals. // When you look back at what the Korean American groups at the time said about the Soon JA Do verdict and the Latasha Harlins verdict, nobody really backed up Soon Ja Do. It was only her church group that showed up at the trial. These bigger groups that purportedly represented the Korean community understood that this was a miscarriage of justice.
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Gustavo: More, after the break.
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Gustavo: Sandy, at the beginning of our conversation, you said obviously things are far more different today than they were 30 years ago. And one of the things that has changed immensely has been our organization, our paper, the Los Angeles times. What was it like during the riots?
Sandy: It was very tense in our newsroom and it was very difficult. We did not have many reporters of color. I think we had two Korean reporters, five or six Black reporters, probably five or six Latino reporters. Maybe not even that many. It was 30 years ago. I can't, I can't remember it all, but...
Gustavo: And this is a time when there was over a thousand reporters at the Los Angeles Times..
Sandy: //Well, what we did have, we had a core of young reporters of color and our MedPro training program. They were all //learning to be reporters. And so the news desk called on them to go out into the riot zone to get color, you know, which they would interview people and basically risk their lives. And they would come back in excited about what they found excited to be part of this big story. And then we're told pretty much to hand over their notes to the rewrite team and the rewrite team was invariably, mostly older white men. And so, their images, their voices, they heard and all that was then translated through the perceptions of the rewrite team and they had no say in what the stories would get and they might get a byline, but that led to a real kind of uprising in the newsroom.
Gustavo: Like LA Times reporter Greg Braxton. Here's him speaking about his experience in the newsroom?
Braxton: Tension started to rise because it was charged that editors were using Black reporters as cannon fodder to go out into the streets and //it pointed out //how Black reporters weren't a usual part of Metro, but then during a crisis situation, all of a sudden we were of great value. That charge prompted a lot of defensiveness from white editors. And it just //uncovered, I think, a //boiling pot in the newsroom about how non-diverse The Times’ main sections were in terms of having people of color, you just pointed out those inequities.
Sandy: So it led to a lot of hard times, and I have to say our editor at that time was very sensitive to what was going on and called a big town hall meeting for us to get in there and vent at each other. And we did, and there was anger and there was crying and there was a lot of emotion. But I think we came out of that as a better organization and felt freer to speak our minds going forward. So it was a growing point for us in a time when we had to pivot and realize our responsibility to not just white readers, but all readers.
Gustavo: Frank and reading the coverage at the time. What strikes you about it?
Frank: What strikes me, I guess, is that people are looking for, uh, someone to blame for the riots. And that was kind of the subtext of all of the different conversations. Because who got the blame, uh, also to determine who got the funds for rebuilding. I saw. Black voices and Korean voices reflecting on what went wrong between those two communities. But I don't hear so much white voices reflecting on how the political situation that created the LAPD at the time might've been responsible for the issues as well. How historically racist practices led to Blacks and Koreans competing for resources in south LA. How white-centric media struggled to produce, you know, journalism that reflected all, all sides of the issue.
Gustavo: 30 years later, we there's all these iconic images, but there's one iconic audio clip. Uh, Rodney King, a couple of days into the riots going in front of cameras at a press conference and saying…
TAPE: Dan we, can we all get along? Can we, can we get along?
Gustavo: And today the issues that were around in 92, they still exist. And Frank and Sandy, I wonder how much did we actually hear Rodney King when he said that, like, did anyone learn his lesson of trying to get along?
Sandy: I think we heard him and, and we felt his pain and he was agitated about all of this happening on his. But I tell you I had an experience that, that made me think //we can only all get along if some of us are willing to suffer privately. And it goes to what Frank said. A few days into the riot. I was at home and I was not working and it was on a Saturday and I took my daughter to a little birthday party, uh, at a park four years old. And it was all white. It was her friends from preschool. And I was exhausted, it smelled like smoke. I sat at a picnic table just to sit there and watch them. And at the other end were two white mothers. And I don't know if they'd been talking about the riots before. But once I sat down on the other end, they said, oh, isn't that horrible about what's happening over the hill? Isn't that horrible? Cause we could see the smoke coming //from the city. And one of them said, yeah, it almost makes you wish they didn't have that video. And I thought she doesn't wish they didn't beat him. She doesn't wish the police were held accountable. She just wishes we didn't have to see it. And I remember thinking at that point, I could never have that thought, that thought could never occur to me. And that there is this gulf between us. That, you know, I don't know. Can we all get along? I guess only if some people are protected from the ugly realities of, of racism. And we see that today, even with the, you know, the debates over what can be taught in school about history. Let's protect some people from it. Can, we all get along was a sincere and honest plea and //the jury is still out even right now.
Frank: Yeah, I'm curious, like what he meant by it. I wasn't there to sort of receive it with all the context of the time. But like, did he mean it as a chastisement? You know, did it mean as a recommendation? You know, was it a pronouncement of despair? You know, like, can we all get along? No.
Gustavo: What's sad to me about it is that we're talking about it sincerity, but all these years later, when you still here in Southern California, It's a joke. It's a stock line. People say it sarcastically. So it's, and it's sad. Like when I think about it now, and I remember him shaking, he was so nervous and almost immediately people started making fun of him like, oh yeah, you really think we're going to get along? Uh, good luck, man.
Sandy: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, imagine him, he gets called upon here's this riot happening on his behalf and he's told you have to say something and this was all he could come up with and he became caricature basically, too. //
Frank: I mean, I think that question underlies a lot of reporting about communities of color, right? Can we all get along? And there are examples of yes and examples of no. You see like a lot of Koreans and Latinos in Korea town also still in the sort of same competition of resources.// There are still instances of labor. For me, the answer is just both, you know, we, we can get along and there are examples of that, and there are difficulties as well.
Sandy: You know, and there were some things that happened that we can't overlook that were good, that came out of the riots that also helped to reduce some of that friction. The number of liquor stores in south Los Angeles declined dramatically. Policing changed dramatically. The whole concept of community policing came out of the riots, the commission, you know, that oversees the police department, all that came out of the ride. So there was a consent decree that we had to comply with.
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Sandy: So there were things, fundamental structural things, that helped to change and correct. Uh, the ability for us to be more cohesive.
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Gustavo: Sandy Banks, Frank Shang. Thank you again for joining me.
Frank: Thanks for having us.
Sandy: Thank you.
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Gustavo: Sandy Frank and myself all have calls and the 30th anniversary of the LA riots. It's part of a package colleagues about this very important part of California. Visit LA times.com to read them all.
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Gustavo: And that's it for this episode of the times daily news from the LA. Tomorrow part two of our 30th anniversary coverage of the Los Angeles riots. We'll go down to south LA it's epicenter and see how the economy and the neighborhoods have changed. Denise getta was a half on this episode in our show is produced by Shannon Lynn, Denise Guetta, Kasha Sallian Ashley Brown, angel Carreras and David
Our editorial assistants are Madeline, a Moto and Carlos our engineers, Mario Diaz, our editors Kinsey Morlin. Our executive producers are Hussman, Nigella and Shani Hilton. And our theme music is by Andrew. Like what you're listening to then make sure to follow the times on whatever platform you use. I'm Gustavo Yandel, we'll be back tomorrow with all the news and this modern Garcia's.