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This Day in Black History: March 3, 1991

Rodney King brutally beaten by four white Los Angeles Police officers. After the officers were acquitted, violent riots broke out throughout South Los Angeles, where 53 people were killed and nearly 2,400 were hurt.

On this day in 1991, Rodney King, a Black motorist, was brutally kicked, tasered and beaten by four white Los Angeles Police officers during a traffic stop on a San Fernando Valley freeway. The incident was caught on film by an amateur cameraman who released the 12-minute video to a local news station, unveiling the underbelly of the LAPD and galvanizing a call to justice from civil rights leaders and others appalled by the blatant abuse of power. When the four officers were acquitted by a mostly white jury one year later, violent riots erupted through the heavily minority community of South Los Angeles and spread into other parts of the city; three people were killed and nearly 2,400 were hurt. 


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 (Photo: AP Photo/George Holliday/Courtesy of KTLA Los Angeles, File) 

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