"I don't condone rioting, but I understand it": Rodney King's daughter reflects on father's legacy

Record ID: 1670573

  • Title: "I don't condone rioting, but I understand it": Rodney King's daughter reflects on father's legacy
  • Date: 28th April 2022
  • Summary: FULLERTON, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES (APRIL 27, 2022) (Reuters) VARIOUS OF LORA KING, DAUGHTER OF RODNEY KING, LOOKING AT PHOTOS OF HER FATHER
  • Embargoed: 12th May 2022 20:59
  • Keywords: LA riots Los Angeles Rodney King anniversary daughter riots
  • Location: FULLERTON AND LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES/NEW YORK, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES
  • City: FULLERTON AND LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES/NEW YORK, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES
  • Country: USA
  • Topics: Conflicts/War/Peace,United States,Civil Unrest
  • Reuters ID: LVA002469928042022RP1
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: As Los Angeles prepares to mark 30 years since the acquittal of four Los Angeles police officers in the beating of black motorist Rodney King sparked deadly riots in the city, King's daughter, Lora, reflects on her father’s enduring legacy.
    Long before the advent of the Black Lives Matter movement, the name Rodney King became synonymous with the use of excessive force in policing minority groups. King, then 25, was battered by a squad of white officers after a traffic stop in March 1991, an incident caught in graphic detail on a bystander’s video. The video prompted a national debate on police brutality and race relations.
    When the officers were cleared of brutality charges a year later, riots broke out in Los Angeles, resulting in 53 deaths and an estimated $1 billion in damage.
    "I think the whole world felt the same. We were in the state of shock, considering we had never witnessed anything like this on TV. So you just knew for sure they were going to be found guilty and they weren't. So, it was very shocking... it's basic math and it was not adding up. It was very shocking," Lora King told Reuters on Wednesday (April 27), two days before the 30th anniversary of the riots.
    During the riots, King made a famous televised appeal for calm, saying: “Can we all get along?”
    "You know, my dad was given a speech to say and he didn't, he chose to speak from his heart and I think that that's very prolific. In addition to the words that he spoke, that we still ask ourselves today, some people joke about it, some people are serious about it, but obviously, we can't all get along because we're still asking," said Lora King, about how her father came to say those famous words.
    "I don't condone rioting, but I understand it … I feel like if another race was crying out for help, it would be a state of emergency, not just merchandise being burned down being in a state of emergency. I think a Black man's life or a Black woman's life would be a state of emergency, and it's not. So it's frustrating," she added.
    Two of the LAPD officers were later convicted on federal charges of violating King’s civil rights and were sentenced to prison and a jury ordered the city of Los Angeles to pay King, who was unemployed at the time of the beating, $3.8 million in damages.
    Activist Reverend Al Sharpton called King a powerful civil rights symbol who “made America focus on the presence of profiling and police misconduct.”
    (Production: Alan Devall, Omar Younis)
  • Copyright Holder: REUTERS
  • Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2022. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
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