On this day, 29 April 1992, following the acquittal of the police officers caught on film brutally beating Rodney King, an unarmed Black motorist, riots erupted across Los Angeles in the biggest urban revolt since the 1960s.
Public anger exploded after the acquittal, which was the last in a long line of egregious, brutal and racist practices by the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD). Officers would openly use racial slurs over police radios, and would terrorise residents of Black and Latine neighbourhoods.
Newsweek reported that the rebellion was multiracial: “Hispanics and even some whites - men, women and children - mingled with African-Americans. The mob’s primary lust appeared to be for property, not blood. In a fiesta mood, looters grabbed for expensive consumer goods that had suddenly become ‘free’. Better-off Black as well as white and Asian-American business people all got burned.”
There was widespread expropriation of goods, which many participants felt was justified. One former gang member named Will told the International Herald Tribune: “A lot of people feel that it’s reparations. It’s what already belongs to us.”
LAPD, federal law enforcement personnel, National Guard and US Army troops were brought in to suppress the rebellion. By the time it was over, more than 60 people had been killed, 10 of them by law-enforcement, and property damage was estimated at over $1 billion.
Pictured: a local resident expropriating diapers during the rebellion. https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1705514426300367/?type=3