The L.A. Riots | 4. Glen
Slow Burn
Slate Audio
4.6 • 25.2K Ratings
🗓️ 24 November 2021
⏱️ 33 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Rodney King never asked to be famous. The video that captured his beating at the hands of four LAPD officers plunged an ordinary man into an extraordinary situation. So how did he navigate his new life in the public eye? How did he think about what had happened to him? And how would his struggles affect the trial of the four officers who beat him?
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Season 6 of Slow Burn is produced by Joel Anderson, Jayson De Leon, Ethan Brooks, Sophie Summergrad, and Jasmine Ellis.
Mixing by Merritt Jacob.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | A quick warning. This episode has some explicit language. |
| 0:05.8 | On Sunday, March 3rd, 1991, Antresia Averett woke up to a phone call from her aunt. |
| 0:12.8 | And she was like, Trice. I have a problem. Glenn got beat up by the police. |
| 0:19.0 | Antresia's aunt was Odessa King, the mother of Rodney Glenn King. |
| 0:23.6 | Everyone in the family called him Glenn. |
| 0:26.6 | They beat him up really bad, and she thought she needed a criminal defense attorney. |
| 0:31.6 | Antresia was a college student and connected to black leaders around L.A. |
| 0:36.6 | She reached out to a friend who was the president of the Black Business Association in Pasadena. And he was like, yeah, you know, call Johnny Cochran. He says, yeah, just tell him, you know, Tyrone referred you, you know, tell Johnny you don't have no money. The next day, a Monday, Antresia spoke with someone in Cochran's office. The receptionist |
| 0:56.7 | told her that Cochran was in the middle of a trial. He wouldn't be available for several |
| 1:00.9 | weeks. Later that same day, Antresia got another phone call from King's mom. And she says, |
| 1:09.1 | Trees, I'm going to go to Channel 5 News today. |
| 1:12.8 | They have somebody videotaped the policeman's beating Glenn. |
| 1:18.2 | So she went there and they showed her the video that George Holliday had filmed. |
| 1:26.9 | And that evening I came over to the house |
| 1:30.7 | because she called me from work. |
| 1:32.2 | She was like, come over. |
| 1:33.3 | Come over. |
| 1:33.9 | They're going to show it on TV. |
| 1:36.2 | And when it came on television, |
| 1:39.3 | it was just a surreal moment. |
| 1:43.3 | I somehow |
| 1:44.5 | I cut all emotions off |
... |
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