FOR MORE THAN A YEAR HE had been a writhing body twisting on the ground under kicks and nightstick blows in what may be the most endlessly replayed videotape ever made. Then on Friday afternoon TV finally gave Rodney King a face and a voice — a hesitant, almost sobbing voice that yet was more eloquent than any other that spoke during the terrible week. “Stop making it horrible,” King pleaded with the rioters who had been doing just that in Los Angeles — and to a lesser extent in San Francisco, Atlanta, Seattle, Pittsburgh and other cities. He sounded almost dazed by the violence that followed a jury’s acquittal of the cops who had beaten him: the killing, burning and looting, he muttered, were “just not right . . . just not right.” As to black-white relations: “Can we all get along?” Read moreArticle info: Times Magazine May 11, 1992
