36 0.00.22
feel threatened, but he was glad to
go home, too.
Dawn Howdershell, a white stu-
dent who was an artist and hung
around with the school’s goth
clique, was in the school offi ce
with her boyfriend. The rumors of
trouble had become so alarming
that they were waiting for rides
home. As she left the offi ce, she
says, she saw a panicked white girl
emerge from the bushes near a
classroom window and heard her
yell, ‘‘They’re going crazy!’’ Phan
Nguyen also saw students fl eeing
the school. ‘‘People started yelling,
screaming. It was a little scary.’’ He
recalls seeing them climbing fenc-
es to escape.
Herman Rodriguez found him-
self right in the middle of the
tumult when his baseball friends
got into an argument with a
group of Black students. He says
he stepped forward, got between
them and spoke in defense of his
white teammates: ‘‘Hey, these
guys are my friends.’’ The white
baseball players walked away, and
no punches were thrown. Else-
where, however, he saw a number
of assaults targeting ‘‘white people
who couldn’t take care of them-
selves. It was the nerdy white guys
who got jumped. I thought that
was chicken [expletive]. That you
would jump innocent white folks
who couldn’t defend themselves.’’
Sterling Perry says he witnessed
one of these assaults unfold. He was
walking with a fellow football play-
er, who was also Black, when they
spotted a white student on crutch-
es. ‘‘I’m going to knock this dude
out,’’ the football player announced.
Perry watched as the football play-
er struck the student and knocked
him down.
School was canceled for the rest
of the week. ‘‘There had been, ear-
lier in the day, a couple of fi ghts,’’Burnight admits. ‘‘There were some
consequences. Those kids were
dealt with.’’
As they went home, many Wil-
son students witnessed a true riot
unfolding in the city around them.
Rodriguez looked out the window of
a city bus as it climbed Signal Hill.
‘‘You could literally see things burn-
ing across L.A. and Long Beach. We
got home and turned on the news
and saw the whole city was [exple-
tive] burning down.’’ There would
be 340 structural fi res in Long Beach
alone during the fi ve days of riots.
Nguyen lived in an impov-
erished section of Long Beach
alongside many Latino and Black
families. That afternoon, a near-
by convenience store and music
store were looted — by his neigh-
bors. Sometime later, he says,
these neighbors off ered him sto-
len speakers and stereos for sale.
Sterling Perry and Terry Moseby
spent the afternoon and evening
receiving pages and phone calls
from friends urging them to join in36 5.1.22
Protest at L.A.P.D. Parker Center
headquarters (April 29, 1992, 6:30
p.m.): Crowds gathered at the L.A.P.D.’s
downtown headquarters, a popular
site of protest against the force’s brutal
tactics. Protests were mostly peaceful
during the day, but as night fell,
demonstrators began setting
fires, confronting officers and trying
to break into the center itself. As with
the scene at Florence and Normandie,
officers mostly failed to react,
and violence spread out of control.Rodney King pleading for peace
in Beverly Hills (May 1, 1992, 3 p.m.):
West of Koreatown, in Beverly Hills,
King appeared outside his lawyer’s
office for a news conference. Quiet
and uncertain, he uttered the words
that would earn him scorn and
admiration in equal measure: ‘‘Can
we all get along?’’Violence in Koreatown (April 30, 1992):
Tensions between Korean American
grocers and their Black clientele had
been growing since the Harlins verdict,
and in South Central protesters targeted
Korean-owned businesses. By the
second day of the riots, violence began
spreading north to the Koreatown
neighborhood. While the L.A.P.D.
worked to insulate wealthy West Los
Angeles neighborhoods from looting,
Koreatown residents were left to defend
themselves. By midday, Bradley had
extended the curfew to the entire city.
Bus service was suspended.This page, clockwise from top left: Peggy Peattie; Ted Soqui/Getty Images; Hyungwon Kang/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images; David Longstreath/Associated PressA local youth looking toward Interstate
710 and the nearby Department of
Motor Vehicles, which was consumed by
flames, in Long Beach on April 30, 1992.