LA Riots in Crenshaw Square & Hollywood Boulevard

Since the inception of slavery, African Americans faced endless forms of inequality and racism. A prime example, the Rodney King riots, were caused by years of anger among the African American population. King was beaten by four police officers: Laurence Powell, Timothy Wind, Theodore Briseno, and Sgt. Stacey Koon on March 3, 1991(Murty 86). King resisted handcuffing, so the police officers restrained and brutally beat him. Powell then hit King with a baton, splitting his face open. King was attacked for over a minute and faced several lifelong injuries (Levenson 519-521). A resident, George Holliday, videotaped everything from his apartment window; this tape would become one of the most watched home-recorded tapes in history. According to the medical center, “King was diagnosed as having suffered multiple facial fractures and a broken leg” (Levenson 522). Moreover, the officers claimed King was on the drug PCP because, according to them, he displayed unusual strength. Subsequent prison reports revealed that he was clear. Because they were white police apprehending an African American ex-convict, the officers believed they were untouchable. Almost a year later, the officers were brought to trial and shockingly acquitted. “At 3:15 P.M. on April 29, 1992, the clerk announced the jury’s verdict and less than two hours later, Los Angeles was in flames” (Linder 7).

The Los Angeles Riots began on the corner of Florence and Normandie avenues in South L.A. and left a huge impact on the history of the city. Immediately after the Rodney King trial verdict was announced, outraged protestors rushed the streets. The beating of a motorist triggered “six days of riots, protests, arson fires, looting and civil disobedience in south and central Los Angeles” (Trinidad, 2014). Rioters vandalized and damaged Hollywood Boulevard shops and studios, strongly affecting production buildings like Paramount and the Warner lot in West Hollywood (Higgins). The actor and activist Edward James Olmos described Hollywood as “Beirut, like an all-out war going on” (Higgins, 2012). The Los Angeles Police Department were unprepared and lost control of the streets in South LA, Hollywood, and the Civic Center. South Central, Koreatown, Hollywood, and Downtown became crucial focal points as the riots spread through the city. Although fires were the main source of damage, vandalism and break-ins surged simultaneously. One consequence of the arson was the destruction of Korean-owned businesses, increasing tensions between African American residents and Korean business owners. The photos taken by Walter Gabrielson Papers depict the smoke and heat from the fires on Vermont avenue in East Hollywood. In the background, a group of protestors strike Hollywood Blvd, as nearby businesses and structures burn, sending ashes across the sky. The fire set ablaze many storefronts, which “rapidly spread throughout the area in a scene reminiscent of the Watts Riots” (Trinidad, 2014). The riot in Hollywood killed fifty-three people, injured 2,000, and incurred $1 billion in damages. The images below are both snapshots of a television screen news channel demonstrating the ravaging destruction from the rioters. Just as the media played a large role in shaping people’s minds about the verdict so to it displayed the violence across the city. Photographs and images in news media evoke greater capacity to shock the public. Witnessing the burning buildings in streets enforced the calamity and strength of the riots.

Crenshaw, a neighborhood in South L.A, was named after the banker and real estate developer George Lafayette Crenshaw in 1904. The Spanish revival homes attracted white people to the Crenshaw district. As generations passed it became “the center of the post war fight for residential integration in Los Angeles and developed into a middle-class African American/Japanese neighborhood” thus, diversifying its population (Kurashige, 41). After the 1965 Watts Riots, Crenshaw became known “simultaneously as an inner-city ghetto and the African American cultural and political center of Los Angeles” (Kurashige, 41). As of today, Crenshaw is a majority African American neighborhood with prevalent Asian businesses, but with a significant and growing Latino population.

The Crenshaw District endured serious damage after looting and fires destroyed the area on the Wednesday and Thursday nights of the riots. The majority of businesses, small and large, experienced the lasting effects of this terrifying time both physically and mentally. Little family-owned restaurants, massive shopping centers, commonly-visited supermarkets, nightclubs, and even more were completely destroyed. Some of these locations never found a way to recover. A food market called Dobson’s, “a fixture in Leimert Park for 50 years, burned to the ground” (LA Times). The fires in the shopping center at Rodeo and La Brea demolished a “thrifty drugstore, a Kinney shore store, a large Warehouse record store and a Security Pacific Bank” (LA Times). Crenshaw Square, a very popular medical office building located on Crenshaw near 39th Street, became nonexistent after the fires. A majority of places within this district saw terrible loss–and some did survive–but the depressing mental and economic imprint it left on those affected lasted for years after.

After the riots, the residents of Crenshaw attempted to create a guide for re-developing the area, known as Rebuild-Crenshaw. It addressed a variety of needs from services the youth needed to desired stores in the neighborhood. Projects such as Rebuild-Crenshaw were vital to the recovery of South Los Angeles; however, the effects of the riots are still evident today. Large companies and investors were too apprehensive to invest back into the community. Restoration of the city was an expensive, time-consuming process, and the government allocated over $800 million for riot victims in emergency relief, loans, and rebuilding damaged areas.

Hollywood Blvd. Walter Gabrielson Papers, 1992. Image courtesy of UCLA Special Collections.

Crenshaw Square Walter Gabrielson Papers, 1992. Image courtesy of UCLA Special Collections.

Works Cited

1. Higgins, Bill. “The L.A. Riots at 20: Edward James Olmos Remembers ‘All-Out War’ in Hollywood.” The Hollywood Reporter, The Hollywood Reporter, 27. Apr. 2012. www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/rodney-king-los-angeles-riots-20-anniversary-trayvon-martin-317547.
2. Komanduri S. Murty, Julian B. Roebuck & Gloria R. Armstrong (1994) The black community’s reactions to the 1992 los angeles riot, Deviant Behavior, 15:1, 85-104, DOI: 10.1080/01639625.1994.9967959
3. Kurashige, Scott. “Crenshaw and the Rise of Multiethnic Los Angeles.” Afro-Hispanic Review, vol. 27, no. 1, 2008, pp. 41–58. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/23055222.
4. Levenson, Laurie L. “The Future of State and Federal Civil Rights Prosecutions: The Lessons of the Rodney King Trial,” UCLA Law Review vol. 41, no. 3 (February 1993): p. 509-608. HeinOnline, https://heinonline.org/HOL/P?h=hein.journals/uclalr41&i=533.
5. Linder, Douglas, “The Trials of Los Angeles Police Officers’ in Connection with the Beating of Rodney King,” University of Missouri at Kansas City - School of Law (2007).
6. Photograph: Image of 5 live news channel during the LA Riots, Walter Gabrielson Papers, Collection #1830. UCLA Library Special Collections.
7. “Riot Aftermath.” Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times, 7 May 1992, articles.latimes.com/1992-05-07/news/we-2572_1_los-angeles-stores.
8. Trinidad, Elson. “April 1992 - Rodney King Beating Verdict Ignites Riots in Los Angeles.” KCET, 12 Feb. 2016, www.kcet.org/kcet-50th-anniversary/april-1992-rodney-king- beating-verdict-ignites-riots-in-los-angeles.

Cite this article

A. Feenberg, S. Ciceri, D.Melkonian, M. Olivares, G. Kim, S. Arikati. "LA Riots in Crenshaw Square & Hollywood Boulevard." Los Angeles: The City and the Library. Colleen Jauretche, Editor. Fall 2018. /article/2018-11-21-f18-1-05