Remembering Rodney King — Unlikely Hero Dead at 47

Photo Credit: https://schoolworkhelper.net/police-brutality-rodney-king/

Author’s Note:

Before Botham Jean and Atatiana Jefferson;

Before Tamir Rice;

Before Trayvon Martin;

Before Eric Garner;

Before Sandra Bland;

Before Rekia Boyd;

Before Laquan McDonald;

Before Alton Sterling;

Before Philando Castile; and

Before Mike Brown of Ferguson….

There was Rodney King.

Before cellphone, body and dashboard cameras, police were rarely, if ever, caught in the act of brutalizing anyone. But it just so happened that in suburban L.A., on an ordinary early evening in March of 1991, the cops “pulled over” a black man directly across from an apartment complex balcony… On that balcony stood a man holding a then state-of-the art — now “old-fashioned” — video camera. The rest, as they say, is history.

Or perhaps not. History refers to the past. The King beating occurred a full twenty-eight years ago. Yet, may I refer you back to the gruesome and blood-soaked list I opened this piece with? Paraphrasing Faulkner, the history of brutalizing black people by state agents (or paramilitaries, or wannabe state agents, or even non-state…