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More Voices, Impressions and Conversations 

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More Voices, Impressions and Conversations 

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Crosstalk with Influentials: Stanley Sheinbaum, Sheryl Lee Ralph, Richard Reeves, Angela Oh, etc.

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From Dorinne Kondo's "Worldmaking: Race, Performance, and the Work of Creativity"

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From Dorinne Kondo's "Worldmaking: Race, Performance, and the Work of Creativity"

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Chapter 3: (En)Acting Theory
Anna Deavere Smith's acting theory

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PASSWORD: TwilightGP_11072022

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Latasha Harlins & Soon Ja Du Surveillance Tape (March 16, 1991)

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Latasha Harlins & Soon Ja Du Surveillance Tape (March 16, 1991)

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A note from our video designer Yee Eun Nam: "This one has the full length  of video and I added comments to indicate when the fight and shooting happen in the video."

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Reginald Denny Newschopper video (April 29, 1992)

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Reginald Denny Newschopper video (April 29, 1992)

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Nota bene: Our video designer, Yee Eun Nam, entered helpful comments with timestamps alongside the video. The video was most likely edited to follow along with the spoken text in the show script. And it should match pretty well when performed. Thanks Yee!

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Join the web's most supportive community of creators and get high-quality tools for hosting, sharing, and streaming videos in gorgeous HD and 4K with no ads.

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MLK Tries to Quiet a Crowd in Watts 1965

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MLK Tries to Quiet a Crowd in Watts 1965

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1965 THROWBACK: "MLK GOES TO WATTS AFTER RIOTS"

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More current interview of Elaine Brown (Note from Anna: 3:26 will help with rhythms she uses at dinner table)

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More current interview of Elaine Brown (Note from Anna: 3:26 will help with rhythms she uses at dinner table)

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Elaine Brown (from around the same time she was interviewed by Anna) Time codes: 5:25, 18:23

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Elaine Brown (from around the same time she was interviewed by Anna) Time codes: 5:25, 18:23

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Black Power: A Discussion on the Condition of the Black Community

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Maxine Waters FAME Speech (Note from Anna: most of the speech is found at  8:55 - 13:35, however it is important to listen to the whole thing)

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Maxine Waters FAME Speech (Note from Anna: most of the speech is found at  8:55 - 13:35, however it is important to listen to the whole thing)

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Maxine Waters responds to verdict- CSPAN

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Maxine Waters responds to verdict- CSPAN

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Twilight Bey Eulogizes Michael Zinzun, 2006, time code 9:34 (Video)

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Twilight Bey Eulogizes Michael Zinzun, 2006, time code 9:34 (Video)

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The Rev. Cecil Murray preaches as the fires burn, May 3, 1992

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The Rev. Cecil Murray preaches as the fires burn, May 3, 1992

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USC Center for Religion and Civic Culture

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May 3, 1992: Rev. Cecil Murray Preaches as the Fires of the L.A. Riots Burn

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Raw Footage of Lawyers and Press After Verdict

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Raw Footage of Lawyers and Press After Verdict

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Raw Footage After the Verdict in the Rodney King Trial  | From the Archives | NBCLA

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Héctor Tobar article about 30 year anniversary of uprisings

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Héctor Tobar article about 30 year anniversary of uprisings

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The L.A. Riots Were 30 Years Ago. I’m Still Trying to Understand Them. (Published 2022)

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In 1992, Héctor Tobar was a young reporter at The Los Angeles Times when the city erupted in violence. What really happened — and what didn’t?

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Effects of uprisings on Korean Americans

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Effects of uprisings on Korean Americans

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the la riots were a rude awakening for korean-americans - cnn

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The LA riots were a rude awakening for Korean-Americans

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Twenty-five years after the LA riots, Korean-Americans remember how it profoundly shaped their sense of their place in US society.

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Rev. Cecil Murray reflects on the uprising, 2017 (Audio)

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Rev. Cecil Murray reflects on the uprising, 2017 (Audio)

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The Rev. Cecil Murray, Then And Now On The 1992 LA Riots

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It’s been 25 years since the Los Angeles riots. NPR’s David Greene talks with the Rev. Cecil Murray, a former pastor at First African Methodist Episcopal Church in Los Angeles.

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Rodney King video (March 3, 1991 filmed by George Holliday)

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Rodney King video (March 3, 1991 filmed by George Holliday)

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A NYT obit article about George Holliday:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/22/us/george-holliday-dead.html

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Join the web's most supportive community of creators and get high-quality tools for hosting, sharing, and streaming videos in gorgeous HD and 4K with no ads.

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LA Rising: Korean Relations with Blacks and Latinos after Civil Unrest

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LA Rising: Korean Relations with Blacks and Latinos after Civil Unrest

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LASD Film "Physical Control Techniques-The Baton", Part One, 1963 (Original from LASD Archive)

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Police demonstrate chokehold technique, time code 1:30

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Police demonstrate chokehold technique, time code 1:30

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Click Here for Information on the Personas portrayed in the show (in progress)

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Click Here for Information on the Personas portrayed in the show (in progress)

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PART 2 REV TWILIGHT 020923 Rocked - Elvira.docx (1)

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When you close your eyes and picture that moment, what's the first image that comes to mind?

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When you close your eyes and picture that moment, what's the first image that comes to mind?

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If you had to describe that moment in time in 3 words or phrases, what would they be?

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If you had to describe that moment in time in 3 words or phrases, what would they be?

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Do you still think about that moment in time? How often do you think about the unrest in 1992? Do you still talk about it? Who do you talk to about it?

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Do you still think about that moment in time? How often do you think about the unrest in 1992? Do you still talk about it? Who do you talk to about it?

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How did you experience that moment in time through your 5 senses? Are there any smells, tastes, feelings/sensations, sounds or sights that take you back to Los Angeles in 1992?

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How did you experience that moment in time through your 5 senses? Are there any smells, tastes, feelings/sensations, sounds or sights that take you back to Los Angeles in 1992?

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Did you lean on anyone for support during that time? If so, who? If not, why not?

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Did you lean on anyone for support during that time? If so, who? If not, why not?

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Do you think that moment in time has impacted your current reality (perspective, point-of-view)? If so, how?

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Do you think that moment in time has impacted your current reality (perspective, point-of-view)? If so, how?

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How did you experience the unrest in 2020 around the murder of George Floyd? Since 1992, America has seen many iterations of unrest in response to police violence. How do you experience our current moments of unrest, in context with your experience in 1992? Have you ever thought about the way this unrest repeats itself?  At what point did you realize that it keeps happening? Why do you think it keeps happening?

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How did you experience the unrest in 2020 around the murder of George Floyd? Since 1992, America has seen many iterations of unrest in response to police violence. How do you experience our current moments of unrest, in context with your experience in 1992? Have you ever thought about the way this unrest repeats itself?  At what point did you realize that it keeps happening? Why do you think it keeps happening?

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What was your initial reaction to your portrayal in Twilight? How do you feel about your portrayal now?

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What was your initial reaction to your portrayal in Twilight? How do you feel about your portrayal now?

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first rehearsal presentation , final, january 7 2023

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The city is still trying to understand what happened.

When we think of the 1992 riots, some ready-made images come to mind: burning buildings casting billowing clouds of smoke into the skies above South Los Angeles, disinhibited crowds rushing into unguarded storefronts, armed conflict between rioters and Korean American shop owners. Most of all, we might think of the intersection of Florence and Normandie, where a crowd gathered to vent their frustration over the acquittal of the four officers who beat the Black motorist Rodney King the previous year.

But unlike the 1965 Watts riots that engulfed South L.A. a generation before, the conflagration that took hold after the King trial wasn't constrained to that neighborhood and was not restricted to Black Angelenos. To borrow from and tweak the words of the journalist Tim Rutten, who wrote amid that week's events, these incidents constituted the first multiethnic class riots in American history, an eruption of fury at the socioeconomic structures that excluded and exploited so many in Southern California.

To speak of the Los Angeles riots, therefore, is to speak of dozens of events involving multiple cities and counties, an overlapping but not always congruous set of memories and perspectives that do not neatly map onto one another. -By Ismail Muhammad

Before George Holliday caught the L.A.P.D.'s beating of Rodney King on camera, the former police officer Don Jackson helped reveal the brutal reality of policing for Southern California's Black citizens. By Myriam Gurba

Read story

The night of Jan. 14, 1989, Don Jackson, a police officer turned activist, arrived in Long Beach, Calif., riding in the passenger seat of a rental car driven by Jeffrey Hill, another activist and an off-duty state corrections officer. Both men wore plain clothes, and clandestine chaperones escorted their Buick. A van carrying a television crew tailed the rental car. This undercover caravan arrived in Long Beach with a political agenda. When a local NBC station learned about the sting operations that Jackson had been conducting, the network contacted him to suggest a collaboration. The activist agreed. Looking out the sedan's window, he trusted that once Long Beach officers spotted him and his driver, they would be racially profiled.

Born and raised in south Los Angeles County, Don Jackson (who later changed his name to Diop Kamau) became a Ventura County Sheriff's deputy after graduating from California Lutheran College. In 1982, Jackson returned to Los Angeles County as an employee of the Hawthorne Police Department. He was promoted to sergeant in 1986, but there was trouble at work. The department was overwhelmingly white, and when co-workers subjected Jackson to racist slurs, he pushed back. Jackson later spoke to the press about this verbal abuse, sharing with a reporter that one of his white fellow officers had chided him for being offended when he said a racist slur referring to Black people. The white officer told Jackson that the slur didn't apply to him. He wasn't Black: Being a police officer made him blue.

By 1987, the stress of working in the department contributed to Jackson's going on disability leave, which would ultimately shrink his income. A psychiatrist evaluated him in 1988, deeming him "hypersensitive to racism" - an assessment that Jackson later took umbrage at. He dismissed the claim in a 1997 interview with The Associated Press. "I guess I'm supposed to sit still and take it," he said, "but I can't and I never will." He filed a lawsuit against the department, complaining of racial discrimination and harassment. Local media covered the case, and an investigative reporter soon located transcripts of police messages that substantiated Jackson's claims that bigoted jokes were par for the course at the department. A Hawthorne Police Department spokesperson defended the officers, countering that they were uninventive, that they lifted their jokes from a joke book. If there was a culprit, it was the book's publisher.

Southland police officers also gave Jackson's father, Woodrow - who was one of the first Black men to integrate the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Office - reason to sue. A retiree in his 60s, he was driving to Inglewood when he was stopped in Pomona. His daughter, LeNise Jackson-Gaertner, was with him, as were several grandchildren who were asleep in the van's back seat. The white police officers who stopped him were hunting for a 25-year-old robbery suspect. In the lawsuit brought by Woodrow against Pomona and its Police Department, as reported in The Los Angeles Times, the former deputy described being removed from his van at gunpoint. The officers reportedly slammed him to the ground and beat him. A recently installed kidney device was forcibly removed from his body.

After the assault on his father, Jackson resolved to catch officers perpetrating abuse. Traveling with a video camera, he filmed incidents in real time, but his growing reputation as an activist made it difficult for him to document abuse in Hawthorne without being spotted. When NBC asked to film one of Jackson's stings, he went to Long Beach, where police officers would be less likely to recognize him, and his driver, as "blue." Instead, they would be perceived as two working-class men traveling Long Beach streets while Black.

Sure enough, two Long Beach police officers, Mark Dickey and Mark Ramsey, caught sight of the vehicle and followed it before bringing the sedan to a stop. When Jackson exited the vehicle, Dickey barked profanity at him before forcing his head through the plate-glass window of a nearby motorcycle shop. Dickey slammed him into the hood of his police car, handcuffed him and placed him under arrest. In their report, the officers justified their violence by saying that the Buick had been weaving between lanes and accused Jackson of uncooperative behavior. But NBC's cameras caught footage that contradicted the officers' report; when the station aired the footage, it turned Jackson into a quasi celebrity and put the Long Beach Police Department under national scrutiny. Two years before George Holliday recorded Los Angeles police officers beating Rodney King, indisputable video evidence of police brutality brought hope that justice was on the horizon.

At a Long Beach City Council hearing, Black residents testified that the abuse perpetrated against Jackson was status quo, communicating that their experience of policing was an experience of violence. Dickey was charged with excessive force and falsifying a police report; Ramsey was charged only with falsification. Judge James Wright presided over their trial, with a jury composed of nine white people, two Latinx people and one Black person. The jury deadlocked, leading Wright to declare a mistrial and dismiss the charges. The officers, their attorneys and most of the jury celebrated this outcome at a restaurant overlooking the still waters of the Pacific Ocean. The only Black juror did not join them. One year before a jury in Simi Valley declared the officers who beat King not guilty, Southern Californians learned that incontrovertible video evidence was not enough to verify the reality of racist policing.

Myriam Gurba is a writer and activist living in Long Beach, Calif. She is one of the founders of the Dignidad Literaria, a social movement formed to combat white supremacy in the publishing industry. She is the author of several books including "Mean," a New York Times Editors' Choice.

In 1992, Woodrow Wilson High School became an example of the city's unrest after the Rodney King verdict. Thirty years later, it's still unclear what happened - and what didn't. By Héctor Tobar

Read story

27 years before the 1992 Riots, the journalist Walter Thompson covered the 1965 Watts Riots. Looking back through his reporting notebook, Thompson's grandson considers what did and didn't change between the two events. By Walter Thompson-Hernández

Read story

My aunt Elisa - affectionately known in our family as Tía Licha - got off work at Nimitz Middle School in Huntington Park an hour before she picked me up from school in the same neighborhood. It was Wednesday, April 29, 1992, her 34th birthday. By the time she locked the textbook room behind her and walked to the employee parking lot that afternoon, there were dark clouds forming to our west. "No rain," Tía Licha overheard someone shout before opening their car door. "No rain. Probably just a fire or something."

When we arrived home, Bear, a retired World War II veteran and the last white man on our block, sat on his front porch. A battery-powered radio played faintly while he watched us walk from across the street. After making brief eye contact with him, I quickly lowered my head. It had been a little over a week since two neighborhood friends and I threw grapefruits in the direction of his home. When more Mexican families began moving into the City of Perfect Balance, as Huntington Park was called, Bear chose hostility. He yelled at my friends and me for running in front of his house or for building our lowrider model cars on the sidewalk. The adults in the neighborhood engaged in shouting matches with him. We kids threw fruit from our parents' trees - lemons, oranges, grapefruit - at his home, clogging his storm drains and shattering his windows.

Bear was a vestige of Huntington Park's past. Like other cities in Southeast Los Angeles County, Huntington Park was created for white working-class families in the early 20th century. The short distance to Downtown Los Angeles, close access to a once thriving Pacific Electric Railway system and a five-block stretch of shops on Pacific Boulevard made the area attractive.

The 1965 Watts Riots - also called the Rebellion, or Uprising, by some historians in order to emphasize the riot's political dimensions - changed that. When L.A.P.D. officers stopped 21-year old Marquette Frye near his mother's house in the Watts neighborhood on suspicion of drunken driving on Aug. 11, the neighborhood was already a tinderbox. Intense racial segregation in housing, schooling and employment kept Black citizens confined to neighborhoods to the west of Alameda Street, known in those days as the cotton curtain. Alameda was a de facto line in the sand that demarcated the eastern border between Black Los Angeles and more lucrative jobs and better schools in cities like Huntington Park. Wanton police violence, meanwhile, was a persistent menace. Rumors that the police had attacked Frye's mother was one insult too many, and the resulting riots lasted six days. More than 600 buildings were damaged; more than 30 people died; the city suffered roughly $200 million in property damage. The destruction spurred white families in Southeast L.A. County to leave for places like Orange County and the San Fernando Valley. When property values began to decline, newly arrived Mexican families like my own pooled their money together and purchased homes, forming beachheads for others.

On Aug. 12, my grandfather Walter Thompson - one of the few Black staff writers at The Oakland Tribune - drove down to Watts to report on the riot. He kept a small brown notepad in which he described what he saw and heard: Watts residents clinging to the chain-link fences that separated their homes from the chaos of the riot; National Guardsmen returning fire at unseen assailants; a resident advising him to find shelter elsewhere - every hotel in the neighborhood, my grandfather wrote, having burned down. Most of all, he described a black smoke emanating from burning structures across the area. What he witnessed was a direct response to a state of socioeconomic misery that had plagued the community for decades.

The unrest that spread through Los Angeles 27 years later was, in part, a function of rage at the same privations. A Los Angeles Times editorial 23 years after Watts noted, "Serious crime, drug addiction and gang violence did not begin to rise rapidly until after the mid-1960s, and did not begin to reach catastrophic proportions until the mid-1970s." The people who rioted in 1992 were the offspring of that history of abandonment. Looking back on that night, I feel as if Huntington Park and its surrounding communities were stuck in an vicious loop. With every hour that passed, our neighborhood collapsed into a version of itself that it hadn't experienced since August 1965. Business owners shut their doors, nailing pieces of plywood against their windows in hopes of deterring the looters heading toward the brand-name stores on Pacific Boulevard. The skies became tinted with the same blend of azure and pebble gray that my grandfather described that August.

I've always wondered what my grandfather felt when he reported on the violence. What did it do to his psyche to see crowds of Black men and women running through the streets, fleeing the guns and violence of the National Guard? How did seeing Watts residents resort to violence change him? His notes are terse and objective in tone, serving more as a historical archive than a window into his spirit. Every time I read through them, I am left to wonder where his emotional compass steered him that night. But amid the weathered ink, there is one moment that resonates: When my grandfather drove back to Oakland after spending two weeks in Watts, he used the word "finality" to describe what he had seen, an irrevocable sense that something had come to an end. The experience of living through the 1992 riots produced a similar sense in my mind.

Finality is part of what my mother and I experienced when we left Huntington Park in the summer of 1992. A month after the riots turned the sky gray, my family and I celebrated my birthday at the Olive Garden. It was the first time we celebrated two birthdays, my aunt's and mine. I was 7. It was a special night, and I was surrounded by the adults who cared for me: my mother, Tía Licha, Tío Eve, Tía Meche and Tío Lulo. It would, however, be the last time I celebrated in Huntington Park. Frustrated and fearful of what further violence the deprivations of life in South Los Angeles would cause, my mother revealed that we would be moving to the Westside at the end of the summer. She boasted about the prestigious elementary school I had been accepted to on U.C.L.A.'s campus, and an apartment that had opened up in a graduate housing complex.

The 1992 riots ultimately led to quick and slow deaths all across the city. More than 60 people were killed over the course of five days. Thousands of people were critically injured. A slew of first-generation business owners lost their livelihoods. I became a part of a generation of young people whose neighborhoods were scarred. Like the communities that were irreparably damaged and abandoned after the riots, our connection to the South Los Angeles of our youth was marked by a slow, aching death. In my case, my body and memory were sundered from the place I called home.

I remember that while the adults continued to watch the chaos that night on television, my friends and I met outside to play. The adults retreated into their homes, but the street was filled with children who came out to see the smoke disappear into the night sky. We yelled long into the night and raced one another through the empty streets until the lights came on. We were freer than we had ever been - unaware of the lasting effects of the smoke in the sky. As my grandfather wrote in 1965, children are "the fearless ones," always "too young to recognize disaster."

Walter Thompson-Hernández is a writer and filmmaker in Los Angeles. His forthcoming memoir, "We Were Boys," is set to be published by William Morrow in 2023.

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The city is still trying to understand what happened. When we think of the 1992 riots, some ready-made images come to mind: burning buildings casting billowing clouds of smoke into the skies above South Los Angeles, disinhibited crowds rushing into unguarded storefronts, armed conflict between rioters and Korean American shop owners.

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Geo-political history of Watts/ Watts Rebellion/ King Rebellion (includes discussion questions around Twilight)

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Geo-political history of Watts/ Watts Rebellion/ King Rebellion (includes discussion questions around Twilight)

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As of December 31, 2014, I retired from full-time teaching in Humboldt State University's Department of History. While this website will remain online, it is no longer maintained. History 383 - Dr. Gayle Olson-Raymer Crisis in Los Angeles: The Rodney King Riots
Following are the discussion notes for today:

To see a 2-minute video on the Watts Riots, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRDvY_anJdc
The Geopolitical Realities of South Los Angeles:

As this map indicates - http://projects.latimes.com/mapping-la/neighborhoods/- Los Angeles County consists of sixteen regions. (locate on map and click onto South L.A. region)

The region for today's discussion - South Los Angeles (formerly South Central Los Angeles) at http://projects.latimes.com/mapping-la/neighborhoods/region/south-la/- is one of those sixteen regions. (Locate on map and click onto South L.A. region)

This region originally referred to an area that lies directly south of downtown Los Angeles with Central Avenue bisecting it from north to south. Interstate 110 also known as the Harbor Freeway, runs right through the heart of South Central.

After WWII, Police, Fire and City Officials coined the term "South Central" because of its southern proximity from downtown on Central Avenue. Along with Watts several miles to the south, this corridor was the only district-scale area within the city in which African-Americans could purchase property prior to 1948. While some African-Americans rented and sometimes even owned property in other areas of the city, they were generally confined to single streets or small neighborhoods.

Since the 1950s, the definition of "South Central" has gradually expanded to include all of the areas of the city of Los Angeles (and small unincorporated pockets of Los Angeles County) roughly indicated in the map below.

From the time of the Watts riots of 1965 to the L.A. riots of 1992, South Central was perceived to be the black heart of Los Angeles and among the largest African-American communities.

As this map indicates - http://projects.latimes.com/mapping-la/neighborhoods/neighborhood/watts/ - Watts is one of 28 neighborhoods in the South L.A. region of Los Angeles County. Its neighboring communities are Florence-Firestone, Green Meadows, Lynwood, South Gate and Willowbrook. (locate on map and click onto Watts neighborhood)
Scroll down through the socio-economic statistics for the neighborhood.

On the map below, the green area directly under the Highway 210 sign is where the 1992 Rodney King beating occurred, while the green area to the right of Highway 101 is in South Central Los Angeles neighborhood where the 1965 Watts Riots occurred.

Simi Valley, to the left of Highway 118 on the map to the left, is where the trial for the Rodney King riots occurred.

Damage resulting from the 1992 Riots is shown in the grey areas on the large map of South Central LA. (see http://projects.latimes.com/mapping-la/neighborhoods/region/south-la/)

Discussion Goals:

1. To understand the evolution of South Central Los Angeles prior to and after the Watts Riots.

2. To follow the growth of South Central L.A. prior to and after the Rodney Riots.

3. To understand one woman's attempt to make sense of the Rodney King Riots - Anna Deavere Smith in Twilight. Photo of a racially restricted housing development in L.A. in 1950.

Changes in the Watts Community, 1940-1960. The black population of Watts increased eightfold and by 1965, African-Americans were 87% of the population in Watts – making it the most segregated city in the west. Some of the consequences of such rapid population and segregation in Watt include:

Little social mobility - African Americans were stuck in Watts because residential laws prohibited them from moving to the suburbs. Thus, black residential expansion continued block-by-block.

Overpopulation - Watts had the highest population density of any city in L.A.

Poverty - The median black family income for 1964 in Watts was $4,669.

White flight - As blacks moved in, whites moved out - not just residential, but also white businesses moved out.

Subdivision of property and increased congestion - Absentee landlords subdivided properties into apartments, increasing congestion.

Community disintegration - as early as the 1940s, both the federal and local governments were aware of emerging problems in Watts

During WWII, a federal study conducted found conditions in Watts included lack of quality and integration in schools, inability of black youth to take advantage of the city's junior colleges, lack of leadership and employment opportunities.

Another study conducted by the city planning commission in 1947 found that Watts had inadequate recreational facilities, deteriorating streets, decaying private and public buildings, ineffective public transportation, limited shopping facilities, and high disease, death, and delinquency rates.

Poor relations between police and the black community

Disproportionately young population with little to do - by 1960, about 60% of the population was under 25 years old; 40% of those between 18-25 had no job while the remaining 60% were mainly underemployed.

All of these conditions contributed to the Watts riots which began on the evening of Wednesday, August 11, 1965, when a young black man was arrested for drunken driving and many people in the area of the arrest stated that two black women were victims of police brutality. This is what happened next...

The stories of police brutality rapidly spread and drew people throughout the area to the scene.

Officers responding to the scene had no understanding of the cultural or economic conditions of the community and plunged into the area assuming the worst and reacting accordingly.

Throughout Wednesday night and into early Thursday morning, random violence sputtered sporadically where mostly young African Americans stoned police, randomly attacked white drivers passing through the area, and clashed with television crews.

Police Chief William Walker appeared on television informing Los Angeleans that the problems were isolated and attributed to a "few agitators" who advocated civil disobedience.

While he probably believed this to be true, the African American residents knew better. Some members of the Watts community held an assembly on Thursday afternoon in the attempt to organize teams of peacemakers to contact neighborhood gangs and prevent another night of violence.

Due largely to the huge presence of television crews, the failure of local authorities to listen to residents asking that traffic be diverted from the area, and the decision of the LAPD to reject community petitions asking to assign black officers to the district, fires began to erupt after 8pm.

Violence quickly spread over a wider area, moving into Central Watts and northwest to the area beyond USC and the LA Coliseum.

Several dozen cars were burned and 76 buildings were looted or destroyed Thursday night.

By Friday, local law enforcement was completely overwhelmed; nonetheless, it was not until 11pm that the National Guard began arrived to establish road blocks in the hope of containing the riot.

By Saturday morning, entire blocks were ablaze or in ashes and more than a dozen people were dead.

Before the turmoil subsided on Sunday, the consequences were enormous:

10,000 local people were involved in the riots, interacting with 13,000 National Guard troops, the California Highway Patrol, and law-enforcement officers from several local jurisdictions.

34 people were dead, 31 of whom were black.

The number of those injured ranged from 849-1,309.

Arrests numbered close to 4,000.

Estimated property damage was $40 million - with 600 buildings suffering damage, 200 of which were totally destroyed by fire.

Most of our history books say it was the most destructive riot in U.S. History.

And what was the aftermath of the Riots?

1. 1965 - The state sponsored the McCone Commission Report, Violence in a City - An End or a Beginning? - which identified numerous contributors to the explosion: inequities and conditions that had been observed for at least 20 years prior to the riot; congestion that resulted in decaying neighborhoods, severe underemployment, police harassment, limited opportunity and inadequate education; increased poverty; functional illiteracy; general racial discrimination of African Americans of all classes. However, while it admitted that black residents of Watts were disadvantaged, they also stated that instead of protesting, residents needed to shoulder "a full share of the responsibility of his own well being."

2. Robert Fogelson's critique of the McCone report - which stated that the report used the language of romantic capitalism to justify the fact that there was no sufficient cause for such violence. It concluded that violence in Watts was unacceptable and that no matter how grave the residents' grievances, "there are no legitimate grounds for violent protest."

3. 1970 Institute of Government and Public Affairs study, The Los Angeles Riots: A Socio-Psychological Study - which based the following findings on interviews with 586 residents of South Central LA:

Up to 15 percent of the black adult population - about 22,000 people - particpated in some aspect of the rioting.

Interviewees stated the following grievances: poor neighborhood conditions (33%); mistreatment by whites (14%); economic conditions (13%); no specific complains (21%).

Their ultimate conclusion - "the one thread which ran through most explanations was a high level of discontent among the Negro population of the city."

In its section "Implications for the Future," the report concluded "If the riots are viewed as a revolt against the System, as a crying out against the piling up of numerous grievances, and these conditions continue to fester, some pattern of violence response will emerge."

Unfortunately, the prediction of this quote was quite accurate - literally nothing ws done other than conducting a study to deal with all the underlying grievances of the Watts riots. So, 21 years later, violence erupted again.

Events leading to and following the Rodney King Trial and Riots:
1991 - On March 3, Los Angeles motorist Rodney King was chased by two Highway Patrol officers who tried to arrest him after an 8-mile long chase. The Highway Patrol officers were assisted by LAPD Sergeant Stacey Koon and Laurence Powell, Theodore Briseno, and Timothy Wind. From his nearby apartment, George Holliday videotaped the scene as three officers hit the unarmed King over fifty times with metal batons before finally handcuffing him. King was taken to a hospital by ambulance. The tape - usually edited to delete a 13-second piece in which King charged the officers- was repeatedly shown on TV.

March 4, Holliday took his videotape to Los Angeles television station KTLA which broadcasts it on the evening news.

March 5, CNN obtained a copy of the Holliday videotape and played it on its nationwide cable news program. The FBI opened an investigation of the King beating.

March 14, the grand jury returned indictments against all four LAPD officers.

On March 16, just 13 days after the King beating, a 15-year-old African American girl was shot in the back of the head by a Korean shopkeeper Soon Ja Du in South Central L.A.

In the trial of the shopkeeper - People v. Superior Court of Los Angeles County - the jury found Du guilty of voluntary manslaughter and recommended a 16-year prison sentence, believing that Du's shooting was fully within her control and she fired the gun voluntarily. The presiding judge reduced the sentence to five years probation, 400 hours of community service, and a $500 fine.

1992 - On Feburary 3, the trial of four LAPD officers on charges of beating King began in Simi Valley.

On April 29, the jury - 10 whites, one Hispanic, and one Filipino-American - acquitted Koon, Wind, and Briseno of all charges and is unable to reach verdict on one charge against Powell. By 5pm, violence and looting broke out in South Central Los Angeles - violence that lasted three days. When the riots were over, 53 people were killed; over 16,000 people were arrested; businesses were looted or burned in areas as diverse as Koreatown, Hollywood, Watts, Beverly Hills, Long Beach, and Pomona; the fire department responded to over 500 fires; and over $1 billion total property losses occurred. The photo to the left is of a private residence destroyed during the riots.

On April 30, President George Bush ordered the Department of Justice to investigate the possibility of filing charges against the LAPD officers for violating the federal civil rights of Rodney King.

1993 - On April 16, the federal jury convicted Koon and Powell on one charge of violating King's civil rights and found Wind and Briseno not guilty. No disturbances followed the verdict.

On August 4, Judge Davies sentenced Powell and Koon to thirty months in a federal correctional camp.

1994 - On April 19, in a civil trial, King was awarded $3.8 million in damges for medical bills and pain and suffering after he gave graphic testimony describing his beating and asserted that he had heard racial epithets as he lay on the ground. He did not receive punitive damages.

1995 - On January 13, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Judge Davies' sentence was too lenient and sent the case back for resentencing.

October 15-16, Koon was released from the Federal Work Camp in Sheridan, Oregon, to enter a halfway house in California, while Powell was released from a Federal Work Camp near Edwards Air Force Base.

Dec. 13-14, Powell and then Koon were released.

1996 - On June 13, the U. S. Supreme Court reversed the Ninth Circuit and upheld the sentence of Judge Davies on most points, but ordered resentencing on the basis of two errors.

On September 26, Judge Davies refused to extend Koon and Powell's sentences, thus reimposing the 30-month sentence. The case was closed.

In an interview with the Los Angeles Times in 1993, Anna Deavere Smith said of Twilight - "I'm just trying to create possibilities for dialog, to decentralize the race discussion, to try to bring more voices to it that don't get heard. I believe we haven't found the language for discussing difference yet, and the only way we find that language is by talking in it - not about it - and talking in it in these moments of crisis, when our anxieties a so big that we can barely speak."

Questions for discussion of Twilight by Anna Deavere Smith:

1. Which of the characters provided the most convincing portrayal of injustice? How and why?

2. What do you think she wants us to understand about the causes and consequences of the riots?

3. Do you agree or disagree with LAPD Chief Gates when he said that the Rodney King beatings had nothing to do wih race? Why or why not? How does his response compare and contrast with what Lou Cannon found in his research?

4. One of the accused who was let go said the riots were the work of "cynical, diabolical predators." What does this mean? Why might he feel this way?

5. Maxine Waters said the riot was "the voice of the unheard." Do you agree? How and why? How is looting a function of that voice - or is it?

6. According to Smith, in 1999 - 7 years after the riots - not much had changed in South L.A. Why?

Resources:

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As of December 31, 2014, I retired from full-time teaching in Humboldt State University's Department of History. While this website will remain online, it is no longer maintained.

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Dr. King Reads about the 1965 Watts Rebellion (link below in the caption)

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Dr. King Reads about the 1965 Watts Rebellion (link below in the caption)

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https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/watts-rebellion-los-angeles

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From Dorinne Kondo's Book "Worldmaking: Race, Performance, and the Work of Creativity"

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From Dorinne Kondo's Book "Worldmaking: Race, Performance, and the Work of Creativity"

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Behind the scenes look at the development of the world premiere of Twilight

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9780961909598: Understanding the Riots: Los Angeles Before and After the Rodney King Case - The Staff Of The Los Angeles Times: 0961909595 - AbeBooks

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AbeBooks.com: Understanding the Riots: Los Angeles Before and After the Rodney King Case (9780961909598) by The Staff Of The Los Angeles Times and a great selection of similar New, Used and Collectible Books available now at great prices.

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The Riot Within: My Journey from Rebellion to Redemption by Rodney King

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The Riot Within: My Journey from Rebellion to Redemption by Rodney King

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The Riot Within: My Journey from Rebellion to Redemption by Rodney King, Lawrence J Spagnola

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In this tell-all memoir, Rodney King lays bare his troubled life. He describes a childhood dominated by fear of his violent, alc…

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When the Los Angeles neighborhood of Watts erupted in violent protest in August 1965, the uprising drew strength from decades of pent-up frustration with employment discrimination, residential segregation, and poverty. But the more immediate grievance was anger at the racist and abusive practices of the Los Angeles Police Department. Yet in the decades after Watts, the LAPD resisted all but the most limited demands for reform made by activists and residents of color, instead intensifying its power.

In Policing Los Angeles, Max Felker-Kantor narrates the dynamic history of policing, anti-police abuse movements, race, and politics in Los Angeles from the 1965 Watts uprising to the 1992 Los Angeles rebellion. Using the explosions of two large-scale uprisings in Los Angeles as bookends, Felker-Kantor highlights the racism at the heart of the city's expansive police power through a range of previously unused and rare archival sources. His book is a gripping and timely account of the transformation in police power, the convergence of interests in support of law and order policies, and African American and Mexican American resistance to police violence after the Watts uprising.

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Policing Los Angeles | Max Felker-Kantor | University of North Carolina Press

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When the Los Angeles neighborhood of Watts erupted in violent protest in August 1965, the uprising drew strength from decades of pent-up frustration with employment discrimination, residential segregation, and poverty. But the more immediate grievance was anger at the racist and abusive practices of the Los Angeles Police Department.

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KJLH-FM and the Los Angeles Riots of 1992: Compton's Neighborhood Station in the Aftermath of the Rodney King Verdict

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KJLH-FM and the Los Angeles Riots of 1992: Compton's Neighborhood Station in the Aftermath of the Rodney King Verdict

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9780786443864: KJLH-FM and the Los Angeles Riots of 1992: Compton’s Neighborhood Station in the Aftermath of the Rodney King Verdict - Johnson, Phylis: 0786443863 - AbeBooks

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AbeBooks.com: KJLH-FM and the Los Angeles Riots of 1992: Compton’s Neighborhood Station in the Aftermath of the Rodney King Verdict (9780786443864) by Johnson, Phylis and a great selection of similar New, Used and Collectible Books available now at great prices.

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An instant New York Times bestselller! An Indiebound bestseller! An Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature Honor Book!Troublemaker follows the…

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Moral Uncertainty: Inside the Rodney King Juries

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Moral Uncertainty: Inside the Rodney King Juries

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About the Author:

BOB ALMOND, a professional engineer for the Port of Los Angeles, was forty-nine when this book was written. Born in Glendale, California, Bob Almond lived in the Los Angeles area until 2006 when he moved to Bellingham, Washington. He studied engineering at California State University, Los Angeles, where he met his wife, Clairene, a retired Los Angeles County librarian. Their daughter Kelly and her husband Sean also live in Bellingham. The Almonds have one grandson, Ian. DOROTHY BAILEY was sixty-seven years old when she wrote her account of her experience as foreman of the first Rodney King trial, using the comprehensive shorthand notes she had taken during the testimony. She and her husband of twenty-eight years had eight children between them, twenty-seven grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. Before her retirement two weeks after the verdict in the Rodney King trial, she had held the position of Program Manager for a small, black-owned business engaged primarily in government contracts to supply newly constructed U.S. Navy and foreign military ships with technical manuals for each piece of equipment aboard. The trial of the four officers accused of beating Rodney King was the first trial Bailey ever observed. Prior to being foreman of the jury, her only courtroom experience was when she was a plaintiff in the uneventful dissolution of her first marriage three decades earlier. Dorothy Bailey died in 2012. KATHLEEN NEUMEYER, as a trial reporter for United Press International, covered the murder trials of Sirhan B. Sirhan for the assassination of United States Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and of Charles Manson and the Manson Family, as well as the Daniel Ellsberg Pentagon Papers trial. Later she covered the federal drug trial of John DeLorean for The Times of London; and the murder trial of Elisabeth Broderick, a San Diego woman who killed her ex-husband and his new bride, for Ladies Home Journal. She has written extensively about the law for California Lawyer, Lawyers Weekly of Canada, the Massachusetts Law Quarterly, Los Angeles Lawyer and the Western Law Quarterly. She was a contributing editor of Los Angeles Magazine for twenty years and taught journalism for forty-two years. Former California Attorney General John Van de Kamp praised Kathleen Neumeyer's writing about allegations of police brutality in the Los Angeles Police Department as "excellent, both informative and balanced. That can't be said for much written about this volatile issue."

Review:

The first Rodney King trial nearly destroyed Los Angeles. The verdict was inexplicable to many. King was shocked with a Taser, kicked, clubbed and beaten by police officers whose actions were videotaped by a neighbor.

When the video was shown on TV, viewers were stunned. They were even more stunned when a jury in the suburb of Simi Valley acquitted the policemen of most charges. As the news spread, rioting broke out, fires were set and Los Angeles was on the verge of anarchy.

A year later, a second jury hearing federal charges convicted two of the officers, who went to prison.

As a special correspondent for The Associated Press, I became familiar with all of the facts except one. The question that lingered for me over the decades was how the two juries could have come to such different conclusions.

Now, twenty-five years after the case changed policing in the nation's second largest city and focused world attention on a toxic racial divide, jurors from the two cases reveal the secret deliberations that led them to their historic verdicts. This book contains surprising details of the personal interactions and legal interpretations that led to the devastating verdicts. - Linda Deutsch, Associated Press

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.

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9780990466437: Moral Uncertainty: Inside the Rodney King Juries - Almond, Bob; Bailey, Dorothy; Neumeyer, Kathleen: 0990466434 - AbeBooks

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About the Author: BOB ALMOND, a professional engineer for the Port of Los Angeles, was forty-nine when this book was written. Born in Glendale, California, Bob Almond lived in the Los Angeles area until 2006 when he moved to Bellingham, Washington.

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Blue DreamsKorean Americans and the Los Angeles Riots 

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Blue DreamsKorean Americans and the Los Angeles Riots 

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The situation of Los Angeles’s Korean Americans touches on some of the most vexing issues facing American society today: ethnic conflict, urban poverty, immigration, multiculturalism, and ideological polarization. Combining interviews and deft sociohistorical analysis, Blue Dreams gives these proble…

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Dorinne Kondo, Twilight Dramaturg, 3 part podcast on the behind the scenes process of the original show

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Dorinne Kondo, Twilight Dramaturg, 3 part podcast on the behind the scenes process of the original show

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In the aftermath of the 1992 LA Uprisings, Anna Deavere Smith crafted TWILIGHT: LOS ANGELES, a play based on Smith's interviews with over 200 Los Angeles residents.

30 years later, through the lens of TWILIGHT, we ask: how can the arts advance social justice? Can they help us understand structural racism, as more...

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Consortium for Gender, Sexuality, Race and Public Culture

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In the aftermath of the 1992 LA Uprisings, Anna Deavere Smith crafted TWILIGHT: LOS ANGELES, a play based on Smith's interviews with over 200 Los Angeles residents. 30 years later, through the lens of TWILIGHT, we ask: how can the arts advance social justice? Can they help us understand structural racism, as more...

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Message to the Grass Roots: The L.A. Uprising: Before, During, and… Is It Over?

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Message to the Grass Roots: The L.A. Uprising: Before, During, and… Is It Over?

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Message to the Grass Roots: The L.A. Uprising: Before, During, and... Is It Over? - Media Burn Archive

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A program composed of field commentary by Michael Zinzun interspersed with documentary footage shot by Raegan Kelly, Ray Rodgers, and a news program about the Rodney King incident. This was produced by Luca Celada and East West Productions.

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Reality: Family, Community, The Truce - Media Burn Archive

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This video presents a variety of interviews and musical performances on the subject of gangs and gang violence. The primary topic is the truce between Black and Latinx gangs in the Oakwood area of the neighborhood of Venice in Los Angeles, California in the summer of 1994.

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Readings from UCLA Archive on riots from Korean perspective

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Readings from UCLA Archive on riots from Korean perspective

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This website Reading Sa I Gu is a pair to Writing Sa I Gu, a book of a collection of writings on the 1992 Los Angeles civil unrest. Here you will find out about the work of a famous and respected Korean American journalist named K. W.

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Two Korean-American brothers in L.A. form a friendship with a young African-American girl that bears witness to riots after the Rodney King verdict.

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​​https://weta.org/watch/shows/great-performances/twilight-los-angeles

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Experience the story of seamstress Esther who begins writing to a mysterious suitor laboring on the Panama Canal. Featuring music by Ricky Ian Gordon, a libretto by Pulitzer Prize winner Lynn Nottage, this powerful opera is directed by Tony winner Bartlett Sher.

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Twilight: Los Angeles - The Beverly Hills Hotel

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Experience the story of seamstress Esther who begins writing to a mysterious suitor laboring on the Panama Canal. Featuring music by Ricky Ian Gordon, a libretto by Pulitzer Prize winner Lynn Nottage, this powerful opera is directed by Tony winner Bartlett Sher.

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Rodney King Beating, Anna as Angela King

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Rodney King Beating, Anna as Angela King

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Seven more police officers in Memphis are under administrative investigation following last month's traffic stop and fatal beating of Tyre Nichols a city official said Tuesday.

The additional officers face disciplinary action, according to the city's chief legal officer, Jennifer Sink. Any criminal case related to the Jan. 7 traffic stop are being handled by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation and the Shelby County District Attorney's Office, she said in a statement.

The seven officers have not been publicly identified.

"The administrative investigation is still ongoing, and so this information is subject to change," Sink's statement said. "The administrative investigation is solely to determine if City policies were violated and what disciplinary action should be taken. The criminal investigation is being handled by the TBI and DA."

Nichols, a 29-year-old amateur photographer and skateboarder, died three days after officers brutally beat him during a Jan. 7 traffic stop. He was kicked and punched repeatedly in a case that has drawn renewed national attention to police brutality.

Already, seven Memphis officers, including five who were criminally chargedwith second-degree murder, have been relieved of duty following the deadly encounter. Six have been terminated.

And three Memphis EMTs who responded to the incident were fired after an internal investigation, the Memphis Fire Department said.

Two Shelby County sheriff's deputies have also been relieved of duty pending an administrative investigation, according to the sheriff.

Memphis has disbanded its Scorpion (Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhoods) unit since Nichols' death. The unit was launched in November 2021 as the city's murder rate was soaring and the community was calling for action.

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7 more Memphis police officers under investigation in Tyre Nichols traffic stop

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Seven more police officers in Memphis are under administrative investigation following last month's traffic stop and fatal beating of Tyre Nichols a city official said Tuesday. The additional officers face disciplinary action, according to the city's chief legal officer, Jennifer Sink. Any criminal case related to the Jan.

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Floyd Rebellion 2020 (CW: Photo of George Floyd with Knee on his Neck)

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Floyd Rebellion 2020 (CW: Photo of George Floyd with Knee on his Neck)

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https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/nine-minutes-in-may-how-george-floyds-death-shook-the-world/

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Rodney King Riot, Los Angeles, California (1992) •

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The Rodney King Riot of 1992 occurred in Los Angeles, California in response to a highly publicized incident of police brutality. Rodney King, who had worked as a Dodgers Stadium usher, was arrested on charges of speeding, driving while intoxicated, and failing to yield. The … Read MoreRodney King…

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Courtesy Library of Congress (95506959)

The Watts Riot, also known as the Watts Rebellion, occurred in Los Angeles, California from August 11 to August 15, 1965. The riot took 34 lives and injured 1,032 people. There were nearly 4,000 arrests and $40 million in property damage in what was until that point, the largest urban rebellion in the United States in the 1960s.

Although the riot began on August 11, 1965, its roots go back at least two decades. Following World War II, over 500,000 African Americans migrated to West Coast cities in hopes of escaping racism and discrimination. However they found both in the west. For many black Los Angeles, California residents who lived in Watts, their isolation in that community was evidence that racial equality remained a distant goal as they experienced housing, education, employment, and political discrimination. These racial injustices caused Watts' African American population to explode on August 11, 1965 in what would become the Watts Rebellion.

The rebellion began on August 11th when the Los Angeles Highway Patrol stopped black Watts resident Marquette Frye and his brother, alleging that they were speeding. Back-up was called from the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) as a crowd of African Americans gathered to watch the scene. Since the incident was close to Frye's home, his mother emerged to find her son resisting arrest. Fearful that his arrest may ignite a riot, one LAPD officer drew his firearm. Catching a glimpse of the gun, Mrs. Frye jumped onto the officer's back, causing the crowd to begin cheering. Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) officers arrested all three of the Fryes. Enraged by the family's arrests, Watts' residents protested as the police cars drove away. Less than an hour later, black Angelenos took to the streets.

The five day revolt which involved some 30,000 people served as stark testimony to the inequality and poverty that dominated the lives of thousands of Watts's residents. Many of those engaged in the uprising looted items from local groceries and clothing stores, acquiring what they wanted and needed but often could not afford. Others battled the LAPD which they held immediately responsible for their poverty and alienation.

By August 15 the riot ended when 14,000 National Guard troops arrived and patrolled the streets. The following day most African Americans retired to their homes. In spite of the protest, the Watts Rebellion did not significantly improve the lives of the community's black population. While the revolt inspired the federal government to implement programs to address unemployment, education, healthcare, and housing under Lyndon B. Johnson's " War on Poverty," much of the money allocated for these programs was eventually absorbed by the Vietnam War.

Today most of the population of Watts is Latino with many residents from the Central American countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. Although the population has changed, many of the issues of poverty, alienation, and discrimination still plague the community today.

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The Watts Riot, also known as the Watts Rebellion, occurred in Los Angeles, California from August 11 to August 15, 1965. The riot took 34 lives and injured 1,032 people. There were nearly 4,000 arrests and $40 million in property damage in what was until ...

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Laura Pulido traces the roots of third world radicalism in Southern California during the 1960s and 1970s in this accessible, wonderfully illustrated comparative study. Focusing on the Black Panther Party, El Centro de Acción Social y Autonomo (CASA), and East Wind, a Japanese American collective, she explores how these African American, Chicana/o, and Japanese American groups sought to realize their ideas about race and class, gender relations, and multiracial alliances. Based on thorough research as well as extensive interviews, Black, Brown, Yellow, and Left explores the differences and similarities between these organizations, the strengths and weaknesses of the third world left as a whole, and the ways that differential racialization led to distinct forms of radical politics. Pulido provides a masterly, nuanced analysis of complex political events, organizations, and experiences. She gives special prominence to multiracial activism and includes an engaging account of where the activists are today, together with a consideration of the implications for contemporary social justice organizing.

Laura Pulido is Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and Program in American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. She is the author of Environmentalism and Economic Justice: Two Chicano Struggles in the Southwest (1996).

List of Illustrations
List of Tables
Acknowledgments
Introduction

Part I. Race, Class, and Activism
1. Race and Political Activism
2. Differential Racialization in Southern California
3. The Politicization of the Third World Left

Part II. The Third World Left
4. Serving the People and Vanguard Politics: The Formation of the Third World Left in Los Angeles
5. Ideologies of Nation, Class, and Race in the Third World Left
6. The Politics of Solidarity: Interethnic Relations in the Third World Left
7. Patriarchy and Revolution: Gender Relations in the Third World Left
8. The Third World Left Today and Contemporary Activism

Notes
Bibliography
Index

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Laura Pulido traces the roots of third world radicalism in Southern California during the 1960s and 1970s in this accessible, wonderfully illustrated comparative study. Focusing on the Black Panther Party, El Centro de Acción Social y Autonomo (CASA), and East Wind, a Japanese American collective, she explores how these African American, Chicana/o, and Japanese American groups sought to realize their ideas about race and class, gender relations, and multiracial alliances.

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Los Angeles incarcerates more people than any other city in the United States, which imprisons more people than any other nation on Earth. This book explains how the City of Angels became the capital city of the world's leading incarcerator. Marshaling more than two centuries of evidence, historian Kelly Lytle Hernández unmasks how histories of native elimination, immigrant exclusion, and black disappearance drove the rise of incarceration in Los Angeles. In this telling, which spans from the Spanish colonial era to the outbreak of the 1965 Watts Rebellion, Hernández documents the persistent historical bond between the racial fantasies of conquest, namely its settler colonial form, and the eliminatory capacities of incarceration.

But City of Inmates is also a chronicle of resilience and rebellion, documenting how targeted peoples and communities have always fought back. They busted out of jail, forced Supreme Court rulings, advanced revolution across bars and borders, and, as in the summer of 1965, set fire to the belly of the city. With these acts those who fought the rise of incarceration in Los Angeles altered the course of history in the city, the borderlands, and beyond. This book recounts how the dynamics of conquest met deep reservoirs of rebellion as Los Angeles became the City of Inmates, the nation's carceral core. It is a story that is far from over.

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City of Inmates | Kelly Lytle Hernández | University of North Carolina Press

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Los Angeles incarcerates more people than any other city in the United States, which imprisons more people than any other nation on Earth. This book explains how the City of Angels became the capital city of the world's leading incarcerator.

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Los Angeles has attracted intense attention as a “world city” characterized by multiculturalism and globalization. Yet, little is known about the historical transformation of a place whose leaders proudly proclaimed themselves white supremacists less than a century ago. In The Shifting Grounds of Ra…