A Memory from this week in 1992 - "How I Learned that Hatred is Bad, m'kay..."

Well I sure blew that little three day run... I was prepared to write about two or three different things in the past several days and haven't been able to find the time to sit down and concentrate on writing.  


On Sunday afternoon I realized it was the 20 year anniversary of  the Rodney King Verdict and the Los Angeles Riots...

April 2012

I would imagine for you young whippersnappers that the Rodney King incident is in your current history books ... or surely the Los Angeles Riots of '92 are.  Hopefully the details are

there too so that you're very clear on the fact that this chaos began when some "puffed up biggots" with a chip on their shoulder for the darker skinned persuasion decided to beat the living Hell out of a man for being black...

1992

This was very early in the days of what has become a culture obsessed with voyeurism... note the "dating" of the story -  "Now the story that might never have surfaced if someone hadn't picked up his 'home video camera'"... 


Anywho ... That caused me to think back to this day.... 

For you "Non-Massac County Kids" - I'm the one in the turquoise shirt flashing the peace sign :)
For you Massac County Kids who already knew which one I was :)  - You can also see this pic on my Facebook profile in an album entitled "Vintage Pics".  If you are in it and would like to tag yourself, share it, print it, etc -
please feel free to do so.   

The pic above is a Key Club group from Massac County High School in Metropolis, IL. and was taken at S.I.U. in Carbondale, IL on the day the Rodney King Verdict was read.  I can recall hearing about it that week, but as a "kid" I had no real comprehension of the severity and injustice of what had happened and no inkling of the news coverage that would break in and interrupt my TV viewing just hours after this photo was taken...

At one point during our field trip to S.I.U. that day a few of us had wandered off to check out the campus.. As we meandered near one particular building we heard a ruckus of people and the sound was getting louder... At once, the doors of that building burst open and about 30 black people came out screaming, shouting and as mad as Hell...

Now admittedly, we were not the most studious kids in the pack .. in fact just two weeks earlier the three of us had served a detention for disrupting an English IV class for what came to be called *the lasagna incident*... (I'll 'splain it to you later..) but we quickly deduced that evidently the verdict had been read in California and the cops must've been acquitted (though we probably didn't know the word for it..)

We trickled off out of their view and reconnected with our group.

I was the niece of the teacher by marriage, so I was automatically chosen to (a.) let him know that we had wandered off to explore while we were supposed to be there taking part in the Special Olympics and (b.) that the campus was just minutes from erupting in an explosion of racial hatred and despair.... He grumbled at me... "Kimcomer and friends...you girls need to be locked up in a padded room....."
and onto the bus we all went.

I so vividly remember sitting in my bedroom that evening watching T.V. in disbelief...
That was one of my very big defining moments ... as I sat on my bed and watched the news coverage I contemplated the scene we had observed.. a low murmur growing to shouting, followed by an eruption of angry people and I imagined that happening throughout an entire city... I was horrified.

It was at that moment that I decided that hatred and anger are horrible and disruptive things.  It's easier to harbor those things than it is to let them go, but you must let them go...

For more info on Rodney King see The "Wiki" on Rodney King

Have a Grand and Groovy Day...
Don't Judge One Another...
Don't Text & Drive...
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Please and Thanks!

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