The Contested Murder of Latasha Harlins: Justice, Gender, and the Origins of the LA Riots

Two weeks after the beating of Rodney King by four police officers tore Los Angeles apart, a 15-year-old black girl named Latasha Harlins was killed by a Korean shopkeeper in the same city. Expertly portraying how a personal tragedy became wildly political, Stevenson (history, Univ. of California, Los Angeles; Life in Black and White: Family and Community in the Slave South) mines numerous data and research sources to put the case into the context of gender, class, and ethnic history. Individual chapters cover the biographical details of the three main actors—Harlins, the shopkeeper, and the judge, who were all women—as well as the circumstances surrounding the killing and the trial and sentencing phases of the case. Additional sections provide an analysis of historical and contemporary issues focusing on black, Korean, and Jewish communities. Finally, the author discusses how the case, and a surprising sentencing decision, contributed (along with the more notorious King verdict) to the rebellious atmosphere in Los Angeles in 1992.