LOS ANGELES _ His name once was synonymous with police brutality. Angry mobs shouted it as they torched buildings. And in some circles, the riots that erupted in the streets of Los Angeles in April 1992 bore his name.
The social upheaval and chaotic violence inspired by Rodney G. King _ a black motorist whom Los Angeles Police Department officers bashed with batons and boots 56 times, a trauma that was captured on video and replayed across the world _ became a defining moment in the history of Los Angeles, policing and race relations.
But for all the ways that King, who died in 2012, lives on in history and in pop culture, there's no lasting testament in L.A.'s vast landscape that marks his memory.
"Some people saw Rodney King as a flawed martyr," Kerman Maddox, a public affairs consultant who launched a recall effort against then-LAPD Chief Daryl Gates after the beating, wrote in an email. "Whether fair or not, his brushes with law enforcement before and after that brutal beating tainted his image and reputation with some folks."
Now Lora King, his daughter, is working to change that. On Monday, the 27th anniversary of the start of the L.A. riots, she was planning to launch the "I am a King" scholarship to celebrate black fathers.
Its mission is to provide financial support for black dads like her own so that they can play a more active role in their children's lives. The scholarship, which would be issued periodically and range in value, would cover activity costs as small as dinner and a game of miniature golf, and as large as an all-expenses-paid trip to Disneyland. A prominent private tech entrepreneur has given $10,000 to establish the fund, and others have promised to contribute, said King, who also hopes to solicit donations from the public.
King, 35, hopes to remove the financial barriers that sometimes get in the way of paying for bond-building outings. Those were the type of obstacles removed from Rodney King's life when the city awarded him $3.8 million in damages.
He used that money to expose his daughter to a life outside South L.A. They went skiing at Mount Baldy, surfing at Venice Beach and attended too many art exhibitions to count, she said. He poured resources into furthering her talents _ paying for leadership camps and art programs.
He also devoted much of the remainder of his 47 years to preaching racial reconciliation and helping others struggling to break free of substance addiction, which he'd suffered as a consequence of his beating.
Yet there is no statue for Rodney King like the sculpture erected off Crenshaw Boulevard for civil rights activist Celes King III; no street intersection that carries his name like Crenshaw and Slauson Avenue will for slain rapper and entrepreneur Nipsey Hussle; no park or plaque like the downtown space dedicated to Biddy Mason, a former slave who became a wealthy landowner.
By giving to other children what her father gave her, Lora King hopes to keep her dad's memory alive. "Who knows if they will ever acknowledge him in the way that they should," she said. "He really didn't care for that. He just cared about making a difference in people's lives and creating change."
