Parents' Guide to Rising from the Ashes: Los Angeles, 1992. Edward Jae Song Lee, Latasha Harlins, Rodney King, and a City on Fire

RISING FROM THE ASHES is a story of both violence and hope. On March 16, 1991, 15-year-old star athlete and honor student Latasha (Tasha) Lavon Harlins went into a Korean American grocery in her South Central neighborhood to buy orange juice. The woman who owned the store mistakenly thought she was shoplifting and, after a struggle, shot Tasha as she turned to leave. The murder outraged the Black community and further inflamed the tensions between the Black and Korean American communities. On March 31, Black driver Rodney King was brutally beaten by four LAPD officers after a traffic stop. A beating that might have been covered up if it hadn't been recorded on video camera. When the officers (despite the video evidence) were acquitted on April 29, 1992, by a majority White jury, the reaction in South Central was immediate. Demonstrators clashed with police, attacked news crews, and beat motorists who had been pulled out of their cars. Despite a city-wide curfew, the violence spread from South Central to Koreatown, where so many stores had been set on fire that the fires could be seen from space. Abandoned by the police, Korean Americans armed themselves against the demonstrators and gang members who were looting and attempting to burn down their businesses. College student Edward (Eddie) Jae Song Lee was shot and killed in what had become the "combat zone" of Koreatown. When the city, according to the mayor, returned to "normalcy" on May 4, thousands of Korean American, Black, and Latino businesses had been lost. The story ends on a hopeful note, as thousands of people gathered to march for peace. In 1993, when a federal grand jury found two of the officers who had beaten King guilty and two innocent, the peace held.