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Smoky night illustrations5/12/2023 ![]() ![]() After a while it’s like a game.Īnd Daniel observes, “They look angry. They don’t care anymore what’s right and wrong. In Smoky Night, this is the way that Mama explains the South Central rebellion to her young son: What has come to be known as the “Rodney King riots” is the background for Eve Bunting’s picture book, Smoky Night. In the end, little or nothing was done to address the underlying realities of poverty and despair in South Central. ![]() When it was over, community activists and several studies spoke of continuing patterns of racism and police brutality, lack of educational opportunities, and widespread poverty and unemployment as root causes of the rebellion. The media were all over it, focusing on the violence and looting, all but ignoring the causes. The Army, Marines, and National Guard were sent in to quell the rebellion, which lasted several days and resulted in many deaths, many fires, and much destruction. ![]() On the evening following the acquittal, massive violent public protests-“riots”-broke out, centered in South Central Los Angeles, a predominantly Black and Latino neighborhood. On April 29, 1992, an almost all-white jury in the almost all-white suburb of Simi Valley acquitted four white Los Angeles Police Department officers of using assault and excessive force in the videotaped beating of a Black man named Rodney King. ![]()
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