The New York Times Magazine - USA (2022-05-01)

33

was a senior at the time of the sup-

posed brawl. He mastered Spanish

at Wilson, in its classrooms and with

friends. When he went to the Uni-

versity of Southern California after

graduating and met some of the

wealthier white students there, he

was surprised by how sheltered they

were. At Wilson, he had seen just

how interesting, and complicated,

being an American could be.

Herman Rodriguez, the son of

Mexican immigrants, took a city

bus on a six-mile trip to Wilson, the

landscape becoming greener and

more aff luent the farther he traveled,

until he arrived at the pleasant mid-

dle-class neighborhood surrounding

the school. He recalled living in a

‘‘very ghetto’’ triplex in Long Beach’s

Westside, a neighborhood where it

wasn’t uncommon to hear gunfi re on

the weekends. ‘‘Coming home, I got

jumped by my own neighborhood

gang a couple of times,’’ he says.

‘‘Short, little Hispanic kids. They get

together and think they’re tough.

Five against one. I had to run away.’’

Wilson was his haven. ‘‘You could

take your Walkman, you could

dress how you want.’’ There were

no school uniforms, and the gang

members on campus didn’t harass

him. His parents moved to Long

Beach to escape the more serious

gang problems in Boyle Heights, in

L.A.’s Eastside. ‘‘At that time my par-

ents thought about white people as

respectful, clean. Nonracist. Hard-

working.’’ They sent him to Wilson,

expecting ‘‘less drama.’’

When Phan Nguyen, a Vietnam-

ese immigrant, fi rst arrived, Wil-

son teachers assigned Vietnam-

ese-speaking students to guide

him through his school day, helping

him learn the rules of the American

classroom. In his eyes, the campus

was a ‘‘fantasy world’’ of football,

marching bands and cheerleaders

wearing matching sweaters. He was

a smart kid who grew up in Ho Chi

Minh City, attending schools where

Communist severity and traditional

Vietnamese mores shaped every-

day behavior. At Wilson, ‘‘I saw a

couple of kids kissing on the cam-

pus,’’ says Nguyen, now a doctor in

Orange County. ‘‘In Vietnam, that

was unheard-of.’’

Dolores Villalvazo’s family immi-

grated to Long Beach at the start of

her ninth-grade year. She arrived in

KJLH Broadcast from 3847 South

Crenshaw Boulevard (afternoon of April

29, 1992): The Stevie Wonder-owned

station suspended music programming

shortly after the verdict to cover it and

the subsequent unrest. Located in South

Central on Crenshaw, it was near the

violence’s center. Listeners called in to

report what they were seeing around

the city and vent their frustrations

at the verdict. KJLH would later win a

Peabody Award for its coverage.

Violence at Florence and Normandie

(April 29, 1992, 5:30 p.m.): A few

hours after the verdict, a crowd gathered

near the South Central intersection of

Florence Avenue and Normandie Avenue.

L.AP.D. officers were outnumbered and,

fearing for their lives, withdrew. It was

the first in a series of L.A.P.D. tactical

decisions that invited scrutiny —

in this case ceding control of the streets.

Things turned violent as members of the

crowd began looting a liquor store and

attacking passing vehicles. Larry Tarvin

and Reginald Denny, two white truckers,

were beaten. Local news choppers

broadcast their bloodied bodies lying in

the street. By morning, Mayor Bradley

had placed much of South Central under

a sunset-to-sunrise curfew.

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adio; Guy Crowder/California State University, Northridge.

Rally at First A.M.E. Church (afternoon

of April 29, 1992): Co-founded in 1872 by

a former enslaved person, Biddy Mason,

First African Methodist Episcopal Church

was the oldest Black congregation

in Los Angeles. Led by the Rev. Cecil L.

Murray, it had a reputation as one

of Black Los Angeles’s political linchpins.

After the verdict, it became a magnet

for politicians (including Mayor Bradley),

religious leaders and parishioners who

wanted to process the jury’s decision.

Southern California after a dayslong

drive from Guadalajara, Mexico,

and her English was nonexistent.

With no campus clique to join,

Villalvazo spent her school breaks

alone in an upper-story hallway

between school buildings. From

this perch, she could study the stu-

dent body below her with anthro-

pological curiosity. She saw how

the white, Black and Latino kids

moved in distinct groups, and how

the better-off Black students seemed

to be in a separate circle from the

students who were as poor as she

was. Sterling Perry also noticed the

cliques. ‘‘It was what it was,’’ he says.

‘‘Nobody tripped off of it.’’

Despite the persistent and infor-

mal racial separation, Wilson High

was a place where Perry and other

Black students felt protected from

many of the forces at work in the

city around them. At home, Perry’s

father was dealing with a drug-

abuse problem. ‘‘The police and

the gangbanging was going on out-

side,’’ Perry says. ‘‘High school was

my getaway.’’

I attended a similar public

school in Southern California; I

remember the sixth-grade ritu-

al of memorizing the Gettysburg

Address, with its stirring proclama-

tion of ‘‘a new birth of freedom.’’

The Black students at Wilson heard

similar messages and saw evidence

of new freedoms all around them.

Terry Moseby, who grew up in

a rural town in Arkansas where

Jim Crow was still a fresh memo-

ry, openly dated a white girl and

met her family. For Timica God-

bolt (then Jeff erson) — who had a

‘‘rough childhood’’ and was being

raised by her grandmother while

she attended high school — Wilson

was a place to ‘‘catch up on what

was taken from me.’’ When she was

a junior, her classmates elected her

to the homecoming court.

For many, the school year of

the riots is also remembered best

for something that happened on

Businesses at Vermont Avenue and

Manchester Avenue engulfed by fire on

April 29, 1992, the first night of the riots.

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