*This date marks the episode of the Rodney King beating. On March 3, 1991, white police officers in Los Angeles, California, stopped a car driven by a 34-year-old Black man named Rodney King, who, they said, was speeding.
According to the officers, King emerged from his automobile aggressively, suggesting he might have been high on drugs. Before handcuffing King, the police delivered 56 blows, kicks, and several shocks from a stun gun to the fallen body of Rodney King. A bystander captured the beating on videotape, and within two days, the footage was broadcast on national television.
King brought charges of brutality against four of the policemen. The officers, who claimed they acted in self-defense, were tried before a predominantly white jury in a white middle-class suburb of Los Angeles. On April 29, 1992, all four men were acquitted.
