Talking with each other. Can we all get along . [ applause ] in about 20 minutes from now David Dinkins, who is now mayor dinkins, is scheduled to step out from city hall and take a public oath of office and become new york citys 106th mayor and the citys first africanamerican mayor. I intend to be the mayor of all the people of new york. David dinkins being inaugurated on new years day in 1990 is an auspicious start to the decade and really a culmination of the civil rights struggles of the 1960s. People are starting to see tangible benefits of that struggle. A grandson of slaves was sworn in today as the nations first elected black governor. Did you ever think youd see the day when a black man would be elected governor of virginia . No, indeedy. I was born in the 30s. I didnt think nothing like that would happen. After we saw hundreds of black elected officials, the reality set in that we made a step, but we had not gotten all the way to where we wanted. Last years Mayoral Campaign dinkins ran as the candidate who would heal new yorks deep racial divisions. Now he finds himself scrambling to keep ahead of a situation that is becoming highly volatile. An angry crowd roamed through the Crown Heights section of brooklyn demanding justice after a motorist, a hasidic man, ran a red light and hit two black children, killing one and critically injuring the other. A hasidic student was stabbed to death after the accident. For several days there was rioting. Blacks attacking jews. I got the blame for that. Weve got to increase the peace. Increase the peace. When mayor dinkins went to Crown Heights to try to ease tensions, he was booed and forced to retreat. I think that too often black elected officials have conned White America telling them what they want to hear and letting them go to bed feeling its cool. And its not cool. Those things necessary to protect everyone. There was no one truth. The blacks, of course, called that a murder. The jews called it an accident. There were two completely different realities. David dinkins was trying to please everybody, and he was being pulled in all these Different Directions trying to prove that he wasnt just a black mayor. Your mayor works for you. You have Commission Brown working for you guys. Similar tensions are simmering in cities across america. Legions of young black men and women, unemployed and losing hope, believe they have been abandoned by the larger society, and they are angry. New york city is symptomatic of whats happening in the nation in the early 1990s and what one writer described as a season of racial tension. It really is complicated by the fact that you have africanamericans dealing with stifling poverty and inequality and Police Injustice being perpetrated against people of color. Rodney king exposed some of that when his beating was captured on camera. In los angeles, outrage grows over a videotape of Police Beating an unarmed motorist. Explosive case involves white Police Officers. Beating man just pulled over. Amateur cameraman recorded it all. We here in los angeles was just struck by the maliciousness of what we saw. The inhumane sense of this person struggling on the ground being battered repeatedly. This is 1991, and things havent changed as far as minority is concerned. If youre black and mexican, you gone have a problem with law enforcement. City officials have received thousands of angry phone calls from across the United States. When the rodney king video hit, everybody in the hood was like, okay, finally, they caught them. Whats going to happen now . Now that they have shown a lynching on tv. Multiple officers from multiple agencies witnessed this and not one single officer that night ever reported that anything had gone wrong. That to me suggested that theres a deeper problem than just a couple of bad apples. Another widely publicized incident captured on videotape has become a focus for ethnic tensions between the black and korean communities in los angeles. Two weeks after the rodney king video goes worldwide, a young girl walks into a korean american owned Grocery Store to get a bottle of orange juice. Security camera caught the dispute. Store owner soon ja du thought 15yearold Latasha Harlins was going to steal some orange juice. There was a scuffle. Harlins struck du then turned to leave the store. Du produced a handgun and shot harlins in the back of the head. That it should come so quickly after king and both should be on video, i think really had the sense for many people of saying, okay, now we finally have evidence of what weve been complaining about. A jury convicted du of voluntary manslaughter. Judge joyce carlin sentenced du to parole and Community Service but no jail time. He got away with murder. You can have a black person killed with a video with eyewitnesss and this is what youll get. Stop killing our children. We want justice. The case has become a symbol of tensions between africanamericans and the koreans who have become successful merchants in many of the poorest black neighborhoods. South los angeles had been kind of abandoned by a lot of commercial entities. There werent many markets. So Liquor Stores became like the standin, the place you would go for cigarettes, diapers, milk, whatever. Why dont you open a market that we can use for our family . Go back to korea. Every time i want to go i got to go down to the store make a mad enough to rapper ice cube continues to draw heavy fire for the scandalous lyrics on his new album death certificate. On the album, he threatens to burn down the stores of korean grocers if they dont treat black customers with more deference. The album was in my headphones for the whole year. Cube was reflecting on his experiences with koreans and a lot of asians didnt have a voice at that time. There was no way to talk back. Well burn your store right down to a crisp then well see ya in the black korea i just tell whats real. If the truth hurts, say ouch. I aint sorry about it at all. Youll make my morning, buty the price ruin my day. Ou . Complicated relationship with milk . Pour on the lactaid, 100 real milk, just without that annoying lactose. Mmm, thats good. Get stronger. Get closer. Start listening today to the Worlds Largest selection of audiobooks on audible. And now, get more. For just 14. 95 a month, youll get a credit a month good for any audiobook, plus two Audible Originals exclusive titles you cant find anywhere else. If you dont like a book, you can exchange it any time, no questions asked. Automatically roll your credits over to the next month if you dont use them. With the free audible app, you can listen anytime, and anywhere. 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We used 50 fewer ingredients added one handed pumps and beat the top Safety Standards the new johnsons® choose gentle and im the founder of ugmonk. Before shipstation it was crazy. Its great when you see a hundred orders come in, a hundred orders come in, but then you realize ive got a hundred orders i have to ship out. Shipstation streamlined that wh the order data, the weights of , everything is seamlessly put into shipstation, so when we print the shipping ll everythings pretty much done. Its so much easier so now, were ready, bring on t. Shipstation. The number one ch of online sellers. Go to shipstation. Com tv and get two months free. Supreme Court JusticeThurgood Marshall has announced that he will retire. He was the courts most forceful liberal voice and the only black in court history. It is the definitive end of an era. Thurgood marshall was the lawyer on brown versus board of education. He was on the Supreme Court to give a voice to black americans. I kept my word to the American People and to the senate by picking the best man for the job on the merits. The fact hes minority, so much the better. Judge, what do you say to critics who say the only reason youre being picked is because youre black . I think a lot worse things have been said. I disagree with that, but ill have to live with it. The senate is scheduled to vote tomorrow on the Supreme Court nomination of Clarence Thomas. But now some lawmakers are concerned about the accusation of Sexual Harassment dating back ten years. Anita hill enters the room now. Democrats were going to challenge Clarence Thomas on the basis of his conservative views. His race was not going to be an issue. But i think the anita hill allegations brought race back into the picture. The Senate Judiciary committee is meeting to hear evidence on Sexual Harassment charges that have been made against judge Clarence Thomas. He spoke about acts that he had seen in pornographic films involving such matters as women having sex with animals. This seemingly personal matter is being aired out in front of this jury of allwhite men. And it created quite a spectacle. This is a circus, and from my standpoint as a black american, as far as im concerned, it is a hightech lynching for uppity blacks. Clarence thomas decided to fight back by invoking one of the most painful elements of black history, which was designed to point out the burden of being black. The final count was 5248. The closest successful confirmation vote in Supreme Court history. No matter how difficult or how painful the process has been, this is a time for healing in our country. Its not exactly a rage but its definitely a much noted trend. The whole new wave of black films with black stars by black directors. Right now in new york a new black film is being premiered just about every week. Among those drawing impressive reviews is boyz n the hood directed by john singleton. I really wanted to make a film that voiced what i had seen growing up as a black man in los angeles. Los Angeles Police department, i mean, they were kind of occupying force. It really became a war zone. I didnt do nothing. You think you tough, huh. Four los Angeles Police officers who appeared in that videotape of the rodney king beating went on trial today. Defense attorneys claiming they couldnt get a fair trial in los angeles got the case moved to more conservative neighboring ventura county. It felt like the officers were being sent to a very friendly venue and certainly more friendly venue than a downtown l. A. Jury would have been. The defense picked apart the videotape and every image was turned around to say see where king is threatening the Police Officers. Its not about race. Its about king resisting. You didnt see him to have a weapon, did you . Yes, i did see him to have a weapon. What kind of a weapon did mr. King have . It was his body. Were ready. Were well prepared to take care of any eventuality no matter what it might be. All right, the clerk will read the verdicts. We the jury find the defendant stacy c. Coon not guilty of the crime of assault this is a stunning verdict. I dont think many people were expecting this, certainly not reports. It struck us all with great disgust because we thought that by those pictures, even fair minded people would know the injustice of what happened to him. There is no justice. There is no justice. The first and perhaps most spontaneous reaction came from boyz n the hood director john singleton. Its like a bomb. Were sitting on a bomb. They let these people off from attempted murder of rodney king. I told everybody, listen, its going to go down. No justice, no peace. I was at Parker Center, which is the Police Headquarters at the time, when the verdicts were announced. The crowd began to gather. It began to turn more and more Parker Center has a glass entrance and people were throwing rocks at the doors. I was inside with the Police Commissioners and they were frantically searching for gates. Gates was unreachable because he was at a fundraiser. I was standing in front of Parker Center trying to protect the building, and my wife said, are you watching television . Theyre beating a guy up in the middle of florence and normandy. Terrible, terrible pictures. In our living rooms, we saw in realtime Reginald Denny smashed with the big cement block. And theres no Police Presence down here. They will not enter the area. It sent a message to everybody else that that is a free for all. There are no police. Theres nobody thats going to stop you. So people poured into the streets. And the violence spread from that. No justice. No peace. Wheres lapd . What the hells going on here . Once you dont control Something Like that early on, it explodes and continues to explode. And thats what happened here. Martin luther king jr. Said that riots are the language of the unheard. In the song, theyre saying this is how america going to hear you. Were going to take this thing over. Were going to put our foot to the pedal, and were going to drive this nation in the direction we need it to go in. Bloods and crips on the same squad time to rob and mob dusk to dawn citywide curfew is in effect in los angeles at this hour and still the fires burn. I didnt realize personally the extent of the damage until i went home the next morning. And i couldnt believe how many buildings were burned. It was going on all over the city. Of 7,000 korean owned businesses, 1,700 were ruined. Dont people realize what theyre doing is wrong. This is not the way to overcome racism. People remember the Latasha Harlins shooting and say youre the ones who come into our community and take our money and dont give anything back to the community. Those korean stores were targeted and in some cases those shop owners were targeted. Most koreans came in the late 70s and early 80s. Youre still dealing with the first generation and in korea they all have to go through military service. So they just became weekend commandos. These korean shop owners defended their property with bullets. All the gun shops in korea town lent out all their guns and they just mobilized. And the young guys, they told us just to patrol the streets. We could make our parents proud and stick up for our community. It turn into the biggest rebellion riot in the history of the United States of america since the civil war. For the First Time Since the verdict, the world heard from rodney king. People, i just want to say, you know, can we all get along . Can we get along . Rodney king is not a public spokesman. Hes not an activist. He was a victim of a Police Beating. Clearly, he didnt know what to say. I mean, what is there to say . You beat the shit out of me and im still alive. [ bleep ] you. Thats what you should say. He didnt say that. He said, can we all get along . And a lot of people didnt want to get along. No justice, no peace. Theres no place like home argh im trying. Yippiekiyay. Mom. No justice, no peace. The death toll is now up to 43, equaling the record set by the detroit riots in 1967. Now this city tries to recover. I grabbed the broom just to sweep because the ashes were everywhere. All of a sudden coming right at me was channel 9. They go, what are you doing . I say, im sweeping. I dont know what else to do. Half hour later, there was like 3, 5, 12 people with brooms. Well, we saw you on the news, man. We came out to help you. By 6 00 in the afternoon, there were thousands of people. As Armed National guard troops deployed, these people armed themselves with trash bags and brooms to begin the overwhelming job of cleaning up whats left of their burned up neighborhood. We need to get the youth to understand that theres another alternative for venting your anguish and your frustration. It took three days to destroy it and it took three days to clean it up. I was very proud. I am black first i want whats good for me and black people first if my survival means your total destruction, you really feel that . Yes, i feel that way only because i feel america is giving black people no other choice. Sister souljah is a rapper. Shes an activist and she does not sanitize her message for the public. We all have to come together and find some Common Ground. How do you find a Common Ground in an all white United States senate . She rises in prominence and becomes much more vocally outspoken, a number of her statements are held up as an example of black hatred of white people. Sister souljah told the Washington Post about a month ago, and i quote, if black people kill blac