Remembering Rodney

 

It rang true in '92, and still does 20 years later. 

The backstory from an April 2012 interview on NPR... 

King says his famous "Can we get along" speech was completely impromptu; his lawyers had drafted a far angrier script for him, but he refused to use it.  

"I couldn't see putting any more heat on the fire, you know?" he says, while sitting in a small park near the site of the speech. "That's not the way I was raised."  

As he recounts in his memoir, King was raised in Pasadena by his mother a devout Jehovah's Witness. Their congregation was multicultural; he had school friends and playmates of different races. So King says he was really bothered by the post-verdict fury of some black rioters against nonblacks.  

"The way I was raised in my religion, we have to be able to get along with each other," he says forcefully. "That's your brother and sister. You can't threaten someone in your household. America's my house!"... 

...And though he hopes he's years away from death, when Rodney King is asked if he's thought about what he'd like engraved on his headstone, he has a ready answer: "Can we all just get along? Can we all get along in peace?"