The BURDEN of Bearing WITNESS

As a teenager in MISSISSIPPI, KIESE LAYMON watched FOOTAGE of POLICE beating RODNEY KING. On the 30TH ANNIVERSARY of the L.A. REBELLION, he tries to UNDERSTAND what he SAW.

In March 1991, I wrote about watching 17 police officers paid to protect and serve watch four other officers paid to protect the video at a friend's house in a Jackson, Mississippi, neighborhood called Presidential Hills. There were four of us, all Black boys, standing in front of what was then the biggest television I'd ever seen in my life. That night, I didn't craft an essay or even a paragraph. On the back of a trigonometry test I'd failed, I wrote, “They all just watched.”

I was 16 years old.

I did not describe the particularities of the officers who watched. I did not describe the blows to King's forehead, ribs, legs, neck, eyes, and arms. I did not describe the cars that slowed down to watch before continuing down the road. I did not describe how I felt.

I could not describe the way Rodney King ran.

They all just watched.

All four of us had seen folks beaten up, shot, stabbed, and stomped out at concerts. But in every one of those scenes, those seeings, someone somewhere always came to the person's defense.

By 16, we knew we had to make ourselves meek, small, subservient, docile, and grateful to survive encounters with the police, white mobs, white teachers if we wanted to make it home to Mama, Grandmama, and them.

We knew, just 150 miles from where we watched those 17 police watch Rodney King run, Emmett Till was murdered for being Emmett Till. Ninety miles from where we watched those 17 police officers watch one of their own almost kill, Fannie Lou Hamer was beaten damn near to death in a Winona jail for being Fannie Lou Hamer. We knew that 21 years earlier, five miles from where we watched those 17 officers watch Rodney King beg for his life, police shot up a dorm at Jackson State University, where my parents went to school, killing two students and injuring 12 others.

They all just watched.