Connecting the Dots: Rodney King and Trayvon Martin
Fifty years after Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech inspired the nation to tolerance and mutual understanding, feelings of suspicion and distrust still flare up between blacks and whites across the USA.
They again caught fire after the suspicious shooting of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teen, in Florida in 2012.
To many, this event seemed to echo the same kind of injustice suffered twenty years earlier when black man Rodney King was beaten by white police officers in Los Angeles. This was caught on tape and broadcast on television.
Read more in Access to English: Social Studies, pp. 412-413. Then do the tasks in the textbook and on this website.
Visual Material
Going Further
Web resources
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African Americans' Lives Today (poll results)
(rwjf.org) -
Equality still elusive 50 years after Civil Rights Act
(usatoday.com) -
A Continuing Portrait of Inequality: The Black Child in Today's America
(huffingtonpost.com) -
Portrait of Inequality (film)
(youtube.com) -
Audio: Riots in Los Angeles, 1992 (BBC)
(bbc.co. uk) "Letter from America" by Alistair Cooke -
Black in America (CNN)
(edition.cnn. com) -
George Zimmerman Trial & Trayvon Martin Case (CBS News)
(cbsnews.com)