RACE AND RACE RELATIONS IN LOS ANGELES DURING THE 1990s. THE L.A. TIMES’ NEWS COVERAGE ON THE RODNEY KING INCIDENT AND THE ‘L.A. RIOTS’ I N A U G U R A L D I S S E R T A T I O N zur Erlangung des Grades einer Doktorin der Philosophie in der FAKULTÄT FÜR GESCHICHTSWISSENSCHAFT der RUHR UNIVERSITÄT BOCHUM vorgelegt von Kathrin Muschalik Referent: Prof. Dr. Michael Wala Korreferent: Prof. Dr. Josef Raab Tag der mündlichen Prüfung: 08.06.2016 Veröffentlicht mit Genehmigung der Fakultät für Geschichtswissenschaft der Ruhr Universität Bochum Table of Contents 1.0 Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 3 2.0 A History of Cultural, Social and Economic Urban Transformation – Black Los Angeles from 1945 until 1991 .................................................................................................. 14 2.1 Setting the Scene ....................................................................................................... 14 2.2 African American Job and Housing Situation in Postwar Los Angeles ................... 15 2.3 Criss-Crossing Los Angeles – Building Streets for Whites? .................................... 18 2.4 Paving the Way to Watts – Unemployment, Poverty, and Police Brutality ............. 19 2.5 The Aftermath of the Watts ‘Riots’ – Cause Studies and Problem-Solving Approaches ...................................................................................................................... 25 2.6 Of Panthers, Crips, and Bloods ................................................................................. 28 2.7 A Glance of Hope – Los Angeles’ First African American Mayor .......................... 30 2.8 Changing Demographics in Los Angeles – How the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 Transformed Urban L.A. .......................................................... 32 2.9 Reconstructing Economy – Unemployment, Social Despair and Criminality in South Central Los Angeles ......................................................................................... 34 2.10 Changing Demographics in South Central .............................................................. 36 2.11 Heading for the Urban Crisis of 1992 ..................................................................... 42 3.0 The Rodney King Incident – A Reconstruction ................................................................. 45 4.0 Real Time News – The Rodney King Incident in the Los Angeles Times.......................... 47 4.1 The King Incident Becoming Political ...................................................................... 49 4.1.1 Police Chief Daryl Gates as the ‘Source of Evil’ ............................................... 54 4.1.2 Police Chief Daryl Gates vs. Mayor Tom Bradley ............................................ 59 4.1.3 ‘Bradley’s Inquiry Boards’ – The Police Commission and Christopher Commission as the Mayor’s Measures in Fighting Daryl Gates ..................................... 62 4.1.4 The Power Play Widens: Bradley and the Police Commission vs. Daryl Gates and the City Council ............................................................................................. 65 4.2 The King Incident, Race and Race Relations............................................................ 73 4.3 The Christopher Commission Report ....................................................................... 76 4.4 The Selection of L.A.’s New Police Chief ................................................................ 89 4.5 The ‘Rodney King Trial’ ........................................................................................... 96 4.5.1 Change of Venue to Simi Valley ....................................................................... 97 4.5.2 Los Angeles Facing Its Trial of the Year ......................................................... 101 5.0 The Long Hot Summer of 1991 – The ‘Black-Korean Conflict’ ..................................... 108 5.1 Latasha Harlins and Arthur Lee Mitchell................................................................ 109 5.2 The L.A. Times’ Reporting on Harlins, Mitchell, and the ‘Black-Korean Conflict’ ........................................................................................................................ 110 5.2.1 The Encounter of Latasha Harlins and Soon Ja Du ......................................... 112 5.2.2 Arthur Lee Mitchell, Tae Sam Park and the Boycott of Chung’s Liquor Market ........................................................................................................................... 116 5.2.3 Danny Bakewell and The Brotherhood Crusade ............................................. 118 5.2.4 Ending the Boycott ........................................................................................... 121 5.2.5 Soon Ja Du, Joyce Karlin and the ‘Travesty of Justice’ .................................. 125 6.0 The 1992 Urban Unrest – A Brief Overview ................................................................... 130 7.0 The 1992 Urban Unrest in the Reportage of the Los Angeles Times ................................ 131 7.1 Perceiving the 1992 Los Angeles Unrest ................................................................ 133 7.1.1 The Los Angeles… Riots? ............................................................................... 133 7.1.2 Black and White Once Again? ......................................................................... 136 7.1.3 Watts revisited? ................................................................................................ 143 7.1.4 The ‘Black-Korean Conflict’ ........................................................................... 147 7.2 Perception and Depiction of the L.A.P.D. During and After the L.A. Unrest ........ 153 7.3 Back to the Future ................................................................................................... 162 7.3.1 Cleaning up Los Angeles ................................................................................. 163 7.3.2 National Politics – The 1992 Unrest and Its Impact on the 1992 Presidential Election Campaigns................................................................................... 167 7.3.3 Local Politics – Peter V. Ueberroth and Rebuild L.A. ..................................... 180 7.3.4 ‘Back to Business’ – The End of the Los Angeles Times’ News Coverage on the ‘L.A. riots’ ......................................................................................... 184 8.0 Changes After the 1992 Unrest ........................................................................................ 185 8.1 Remembering the Civil Unrest................................................................................ 186 8.2 The Los Angeles Police Department....................................................................... 186 8.3 Economic and Ethnic/Racial Transformation of South (Central) Los Angeles .......................................................................................................................... 203 8.4 Race and Race Relations in (South) Los Angeles ................................................... 206 9.0 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 213 10.0 Works Cited .................................................................................................................... 220 1.0 Introduction In 2014 alone, more than three hundred African Americans were killed in encounters with the police, one hundred of whom had evidently been unarmed.1 Especially the obscure circumstances of eighteen-year-old Michael Brown’s fatal shooting on August 9th in Ferguson, Missouri, received considerable attention beyond the U.S. and renewed the debate on racially motivated police misconduct in the country. Not only in Ferguson – where the killing led to violent protests, which even intensified after a grand jury acquitted the officer who had shot Brown – but all over America, people demanded systemic cultural and substantive policy changes in police departments […] to ensure black and brown communities are not targeted with overly aggressive, discriminatory ‘broken windows policing’ and ‘stop and frisk’ policies that promote brutality and violence.2 Arguing that improving police-minority relations had to start with holding police officers accountable for abusing civil rights, they called for a nationwide “zero- tolerance policy for police brutality.”3 The public outcry aroused by the events in Ferguson, resemble, albeit on a much smaller scale, that following the beating of African American motorist Rodney Glen King by four white Los Angeles police officers on March 3rd, 1991. After a high- speed chase, King – in departure from the usual arresting procedure – was beaten and kicked more than fifty times. Unnoticed by those involved, however, the incident had been filmed by a neighbor who handed the videotape over to the local TV-station K.T.L.A., which instantly released an edited version of the tape. Because of the video evidence as well as the huge wave of protest its publishing led to, the officers were charged with excessive use of force and assault.4 Despite the horror the nation-wide televised images of the beating caused among Angelenos of all races, large parts of the city’s African American population 1 Sinyangwe, Samuel: “Mapping Police Violence”. URL: http://mappingpoliceviolence.org/unarmed/ [18.08.2015].