| Los Angeles riots. Five days of violence erupted among African Americans after the acquittal (of all but one charge) of four white police officers accused of excessively beating Rodney King. Three months after the riots, the officers were charged in federal court for violating King's civil rights. The officers were found guilty of that charge and were sentenced to two and one half years in prison. The L.A. riots occurred against the backdrop of an increasingly hostile racial environment in American cities. By the 1980s, unemployment rates in the inner city rose as high as 60 percent. In 1986, the life expectancy of African-American men and women began declining, and by 1989, 66 percent of all black children were born out of wedlock. | 1 |
