By now, most of you have heard of the passing of Rodney King. The man made famous for being beaten by LA Police after a traffic incident in 1991 was found at the bottom of a pool on Father’s Day morning. He was 47.
The incident that Mr. King was most associated with led to a trial of LA Police Officers. After four white police officers were acquitted of beating the African-American Rodney King in the first trial in 1992, Los Angeles exploded in the worst race riots since 1965. A second civil rights trial ultimately found the officers guilty a year later, and the LA Police began a major overhaul that forever changed the way the Southern California Police Force operates.
And yet, I noticed very few Facebook comments regarding the passing of Rodney King on Sunday. I believe it’s because we just don’t know how to deal with it. Mr. King wasn’t exactly a sympathetic figure as he had many run-ins with the law before and after that fateful night. He battled alcohol and other drug addictions, and it’s possible that the alcohol demon in his life ultimately led to his early passing. No major civil rights leaders appeared to really try to help Rodney. What did they care? He was just a means to an end. Rodney himself didn’t feel like he was such an important figure, and he still grappled with how his life affected the bigger picture.
And yet, “the other” King may have had a more profound impact in today’s world than the other more famous King. Some believe that the worst of the LA Gang Wars between the Crips and Bloods ended because of the Rodney King beating. It also had an indirect effect of, later that year, helping to elect what author Toni Morrison called “The First African-American President” in the form of Bill Clinton. Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Maxine Waters, and other African-American politicians used the story of Rodney King to pressure all levels of society to end any forms of racism. The OJ Simpson murder trial in 1995 may have also been influenced by what happened four years earlier. And Barack Obama’s election to the Presidency in 2008 can trace some of its momentum to what happened on that March night in 1991.
It’s a stupid question to ask, but could the legacy of Rodney King be ultimately bigger than that of Dr. Martin Luther King? Stupid question? Not exactly. At the end of Dr. King’s life, many critics called him Martin Loser King, because Dr. King was not affecting change enough. Talk to the kids my age and slightly younger. Ask them whose life had the greater impact. They might be tempted to say Rodney King because Dr. King is a myth in their eyes compared to the apparent real-life struggles of Rodney King. Some people compare his plight to Rosa Parks, except Rodney King’s brush with the law was not planned. He is an accidental historical figure, caught between the political tug of war with Police Commissioner Darryl Gates and Mayor Tom Bradley in the LA of the early 1990s.
Rodney King deserved a better ending than this. “Can we all just get along?” A nice sentiment he spoke of in 1992, but until more people on all sides take his words to heart, it is a dream we are still chasing. Sadly, Rodney King will never see the day come where the answer to his question will be a definite yes.
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