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How Did Rodney King Impact The Civil Rights Movement

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"African Americans have resisted historic and ongoing oppression, in all forms, especially the racial terrorism of lynching, racial pogroms, and police killings." This definition of black resilience is best expressed throughout the civil rights movement and protests. The peaceful and violent protest throughout time will always be a historical turning point for black people seeking out freedom and being released from their oppression. In 1991, Rodney Glenn King was brutally beaten by Los Angeles police officers becoming a “symbol of police brutality and racial prejudice.”(Gould, K. (2023). Rodney King.). By no means was King a good person being accused of beating his wife, trying to hit his wife with his car, and robbing a store before 1990. …show more content…

Once to the ground police beat him with a steel baton 56 times while being kicked and tased. King once recovered from the obvious police brutality and injuries his aggressors would go under a grand jury and “charged four officers with assault with a deadly weapon and unnecessarily beating a suspect under color of authority.”(Gould, K. (2023). Rodney King.). This being taken into a predominantly white populated city the jury being racist white people the police officers were acquitted of all charges. This atrocity didn't sit well with the citizens of LA county starting the first LA riots. These riots lasted 4 days killing 54 people in a rage at the jury's verdict. Taking King himself went on television to stop the riots. These riots regardless of their violent nature are considered black resilience because of the fighting back the black community did to save one of their own regardless of the government corruption being placed on them. Causing one of the most memorable “Civil Rights Movements” in recent history. After the death of George Floyd and the restart of the Black Lives Matter movement from its original start in 2013, it began almost a repeat of the Rodney King Riots. This time because of

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