There was never one Los Angeles, California. There were always two. One was the world inhabited by OJ Simpson - wealthy, privileged, and predominantly white. A world where celebrity was power, and where OJ - race be damned - was one of the most popular figures around, cultivating the perfect image, even if it hardly lined up with what lay beneath. Then there was the other LA, just a few miles away from Brentwood and his Rockingham estate, a place where millions of other black people lived an entirely different reality at the hands of the Los Angeles Police Department.
It was in that 'other' Los Angeles where riots erupted in 1992, and more than 50 people died with thousands more injured. The city burned for nearly a week that spring, laying bare all the anger, and all the alienation, that black people in Los Angeles felt towards the police. For his part, back in Brentwood, OJ Simpson had other concerns.
