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| Beating victim who asked 'Can we al |
| Beating victim who asked 'Can we all get along?'
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| UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
, 19-June-2012
5:41:18 AM |
| Rodney G King, whose 1991 videotaped beating by the Los Angeles police became a symbol of the nation's continuing racial tensions and subsequently led to a week of deadly race riots after the officers were acquitted, was found dead Sunday in a swimming pool at the home he shared with his fiance in Rialto, Calif. He was 47.
There was no evidence of foul play, the Rialto police said.
Mr King, whose life was a roller coaster of drug and alcohol abuse, multiple arrests and unwanted celebrity, pleaded for calm during the 1992 riots. More than 55 people were killed and 600 buildings destroyed in the violence.
In a phrase that became part of American culture, he asked at a news conference, "Can we all get along?"
"People look at me like I should have been like Malcolm X or Martin Luther King or Rosa Parks," he told The Los Angeles Times in April. "I should have seen life like that and stay out of trouble, and don't do this and don't do that. But it's hard to live up to some people's expectations."
Mr King published a memoir in April detailing his struggles, saying in several interviews that he had not been able to find steady work.
He said he had once blamed politicians and lawyers "for taking a battered and confused addict and trying to make him into a symbol for civil rights." But he was unable to escape that role. On Sunday, the Reverend Al Sharpton, said in a statement, "History will record that it was Rodney King's beating and his actions that made America deal with the excessive misconduct of law enforcement."
And more recently, Mr King seemed to embrace the role himself, saying that his beating enabled others to succeed and "made the world a better place."
"Obama, he wouldn't have been in office without what happened to me and a lot of black people before me," he told The Los Angeles Times. "He would never have been in that situation, no doubt in my mind. He would get there eventually, but it would have been a lot longer.
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