Rodney King: The Watts Riots

Rodney King, the one man show by actor Roger Guenveur Smith is a visceral portrayal of the historic beating of the eponymous man by Los Angeles police officers, and the consequence of the Los Angeles riots that erupted in the wake of the acquittal of the white officers who were caught on videotape beating him. However, the police using excessive force against unarmed black men leading to civil unrest has been repeated many times in the United States. The historic Watts Riots, a result of police harassment and brutality, took place almost three decades prior to the beating of Rodney King and the subsequent LA riots of 1992 (Marable, 90). On August 9th of 2014 in Ferguson, Missouri an unarmed black man, Michael Brown, was fatally shot by a white
In 1965, almost three decades before Rodney King’s beating, a historic rebellion in the Watts district of Los Angeles broke out as the result of police harassment of motorist Marquette Frye (Marable, 90). Black residents gathered around the scene of the incident, which escalated when several members of the Frye family were arrested and beat with police batons. The crowd grew in size and anger, and a six day riot ensued in the impoverished, predominately black area of Los Angeles, causing up to 100 million dollars in damages, one thousand injured, and over 34 people dead. Both the Watts riots of 1965 and Los Angeles riots of 1992 that began at the behest of the Rodney King’s officers acquittals began in the South Central area of Los Angeles, a historically black, impoverished, economically stagnant area. A commission after the Watts riots found that “high jobless rates in the inner city, poor housing, and bad schools” were at the heart of the rebellion . However, little to nothing was done with these findings and the poverty, the disproportionate police brutality of black folks, and substandard housing in the South Central area continued through 1992 when the LA Riots
On the 24th of November 2015, unarmed 24 year old Jamar Clark was fatally shot in the head by a police officer after an alleged altercation between Clark and two police officers in the North Side of Minneapolis, a predominately black neighborhood. Soon after, protests spearheaded by the Black Lives Matter movement started at the 4th precinct of Minneapolis-- the police station just blocks away from where Jamar Clark was shot. Days of occupation of the precinct and peaceful protest led to increased presence of police in riot gear , openly brandishing tear gas guns. Despite the peaceful nature of the protest, police officers in tactical gear sprayed chemical irritants into the eyes of protesters, used intimidation as a form of crowd control, and even punched a young woman in the face. While it remains uncertain as of now if the shooting of Jamar Clark was a justified use of self defense, the outrage seen over police officers using excessive force against unarmed black men, in the North Side of Minneapolis in particular, is reminiscent of the upsets manifested in the Watts Riots, LA Riots, and the protest and rioting in