handful of people had died from their stings in the
United States. Experts voiced greater concern about
the bees’ impact on the honey industry and particu-
larly on the pollination of fields and orchards, as the
bees’ aggressiveness disrupts beekeepers’ standard
methods of transporting them and extracting their
honey.
Further Reading
Flakus, Greg.Living with Killer Bees: The Stor y of the
Africanized Bee Invasion.Oakland, Calif.: Quick
Trading Company, 1993.
Tennesen, Michael. “Going Head-to-Head with
Killer Bees.”National Wildlife39, no. 2 (February/
March, 2001): 16-17.
Winston, Mark L.Killer Bees: The Africanized Honey Bee
in the Americas.Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 1992.
Grove Koger
See also Agriculture in the United States; Journal-
ism; Latin America; Mexico and the United States;
Natural disasters.
King, Rodney
Identification Victim of a highly publicized
beating by members of the Los Angeles Police
Department
Born April 2, 1965; Sacramento, California
Events following King’s beating led to one of the worst riots
in modern American histor y. It also raised troubling ques-
tions about the relations between ethnic minorities and
large city police departments.
Rodney Glen King was born in Sacramento, Califor-
nia. He struggled in school, was athletic, and en-
joyed fishing. At age nine, he was helping his father
clean commercial buildings at night and until the
early hours of the morning. This lack of sleep did
not help his school work. King started drinking at an
early age, with most of his adult difficulties stem-
ming from his alcoholism. He eventually dropped
out of high school, got married, and held various
construction jobs. Before his famous arrest on 1991,
he had been convicted of beating his wife (1987)
and of assault and robbery at a convenience store
(1989), for which he was imprisoned for two years
and was out on parole by the end of 1990.
Early in the morning of March 3, 1991, after a
high speed chase of nearly eight miles involving offi-
cers from a number of jurisdictions, Rodney King
was finally stopped. King exited the car, but did not
lie face down as ordered by members of the Los
Angeles Police Department (LAPD). Instead, he
crouched in what some of the officers thought was a
menacing position. Though he was then “tasered”
twice, King (a large, well-built man) still did not com-
ply with orders and was able to throw off a number of
officers who had tried to subdue him. Some of them
then proceeded to beat him with nightsticks, hitting
him more than fifty times. King was subsequently
hospitalized, having suffered a number of broken
bones and serious bruises. Much of this episode was
videotaped by a civilian who had been awakened by
the noise. This citizen eventually gave the tape to aThe Nineties in America King, Rodney 485
Rodney King pleads for peace in South Central Los Angeles on the
third day of the rioting, May 1, 1992. His televised appearance be-
came famous for his appeal, “Can we all get along?”(AP/Wide
World Photos)