REGINALD DENNY

Reginald Denny was a white truck driver with a simple load of sand who, after halting in South Central, was pulled from his truck by a group of black youths and beaten horribly during the riot. He sustained serious injuries, including numerous skull fractures after one of his attackers dropped a block of concrete on his head. Saved by a black man, Denny survived.

The beating of Denny turned the whole issue of race and power on its ear. The simplified black/white dividing lines established in King's beating were blurred, and the riot ceased to be about race, and began to be about rage. 

The beating of Denny is probably the most lamentable aspect to this debate: his beating caused irreprable damage to the larger, initial cause of the rioters, to demand better treatment of African Americans in white society. No matter how sympathetic many felt to the repression experienced LA blacks, maintaining faith and support for an uncontrolled gang of thugs was not acceptable. To beat an innocent man in view of a news helicopter is surely foolish, but dancing in glee and laughing at the act is simply barbaric.

I would point to the beating of Denny as the point where the riot lost any sense of agency or public authority. Denny himself is barely an historical agent, having little or no direct mentions in scholarship and commentary on the LA riots. 
 

"When I think about the King verdict and the other shit that goes down in my community," Watson reflects, "the word
                        that sticks out boldly in my mind is rage--a sense of sheer terror coming from a Black man's point of view. Someone
                        had to stand up against this ridiculous verdict that had been handed down. Myself and the others around me in my
                        area stood up."

-- Henry Keith 'Kee Kee' Watson, one of the four men involved in the Denny beating gives his perspective, although not an explaination, of the riots here.