The video of Rodney King's 1991 beating by Los Angeles police officers led to a public outcry against police brutality. (Matt Sayles, The Associated Press)
Twenty years later, Rodney King's simple yet profound question still lingers, from the street where Trayvon Martin died all the way to the White House: "Can we all get along?"
Spoken as fires of rage and frustration wrecked Los Angeles, the quote distilled centuries of racial strife into a challenge — and a goal. Today, the answers to that question measure the lasting significance of King, who died Sunday in California, after he was found at the bottom of his swimming pool. He was 47.
"It was a critical question at a moment of crisis that forged our human bonds with one another," said Georgetown professor Michael Eric Dyson. "It grew up out of the hope and the desire, especially of people of color, to see this nation come together."
The nation first saw King as a black man curled up on the ground by his car, being beaten by four white police officers. On parole for a robbery conviction, he had been drinking, then speeding, and had refused to pull over. Police finally pulled King from his car and struck him more than 50 times with batons and boots.
One of King's legacies is that he raised the curtain on the video age: If a man had not stepped outside of his home and videotaped the beating, King would have been lost to history.
"The biggest impact was that it was actually on tape," said Dom Giordano, a conservative talk radio host in Philadelphia. "It was so rare, except for something like Bull Connor, to have this type of footage."
King became an enduring symbol of the police brutality — proof positive, to many people, that the dogs and fire hoses that Connor loosed on civil rights marchers in 1960s Alabama had merely been updated, not eliminated.
"He represented the anti-police brutality and anti-racial- profiling movement of our time," said the Rev. Al Sharpton on Sunday.
The videotape was the central piece of evidence at the four officers' trial, which became a classic piece of modern racial drama. Did King bring the beating on himself by resisting arrest? Or was there a police culture of violence against blacks, backed by a system designed for black people to lose?
There were no blacks on the jury in the predominantly white suburb of Simi Valley, Calif. After the police were acquitted — one got a mistrial — Los Angeles was engulfed in a uprising that lasted three days, killed 55 people and injured more than 2,000.
"There was the articulation of a pent-up rage that had not been heard before," Dyson said. "A sense that we do count, a sense that you're going to pay attention to us."
Can we all get along? Giordano says yes.
"What has changed is more the meat-and-potatoes, day-to- day things," he said. "For every instance like a Trayvon Martin, I do see things routinely that indicate that we are getting along, that we are moving past racial tensions."
Los Angeles' police department certainly changed. Years of investigations revealed corruption and "a significant number of officers in the LAPD who repetitively use excessive force," according to a federal government report. The Justice Department forced the LAPD to implement reforms.
But what about the nation? Did it heed King's challenge?
"The jury is still out," Dyson said.

Police: No foul play

Rodney King's fiancée called 911 at 5:25 a.m. Saturday to report that she found him in the pool at their home in Rialto, Calif., said police Lt. Dean Hardin.
Officers arrived to find King in the deep end of the pool and pulled him out. King was unresponsive, and officers began CPR until paramedics arrived. He was taken to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 6:11 a.m., police said.
A statement from police said the preliminary investigation indicates a drowning, with no signs of foul play. Investigators will await autopsy results to determine whether drugs or alcohol were involved, but police Capt. Randy De Anda said there were no alcoholic beverages or paraphernalia found near the pool.The Associated Press