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MONDAY, JUNE 18, 2012
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
OBITUARY
King's death brings race riot memories
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Rodney King died at 47. The black motorist's 1991 videotaped beating by Los Angeles police officers began one of the most destructive race riots in the nation's history.
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 huge swaths of Los Angeles, the plea distilled centuries of racial strife into a challenge — and a goal. Today, the various answers to his question measure the lasting significance of King, who died in California Sunday 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, then 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.
King became an enduring symbol of police brutality - proof positive,
to many people, that the dogs and fire hoses Connor, the Birmingham police chief, 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," the Rev. Al Sharpton said Sunday.
The videotape was the central piece of evidence at the four officers' trial, which became a classic piece of modern racial drama.
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 fiery uprising that lasted three days, killed 55 people and injured more than 2,000.
DEFINE: ac.count.ing [uh-koun-ting]
-noun
1. Learn about financial and managerial accounting,business and measurement systems,product costing systems and management planning.
2. Prepare yourself for a job in public accounting, auditing, forensic accounting small business management and many others.
3. Talk business in six classes. Enroll in the Business Minor.
KU SCHOOL OF BUSINESS The University of Kansas ACCT 205: Survey of Accounting business.ku.edu/bminor
KANSAS
Sorority sisters take top spots in Miss Kansas 2012 pageant
KELSEA ECKENROTH keckenroth@kansan.com
Some say beauty is pain, but for two University students,beauty means opportunity.
Sloane Lewis, a senior from Norwich, was crowned Miss Kansas 2012. Brooke Taylor, a senior from North Platte, Neb., won first runner-up in this year's Miss Kansas Pageant, which took place from June 7-9 in Pratt.
Lewis and Taylor, who lived down the hall from each other in Alpha Chi Omega for two years, had to balance pageant life with school and social life.
"We did a lot of appearances around Lawrence together, and it was nice to have a sidekick to go places with," Lewis said. "It's hard to get yourself to do stuff, so we kept each other going."
Taylor missed class a few times for appearances, but other than that, the pageant didn't interfere with school.
"I would have appearances and stuff on the weekends a lot and couldn't hang out with my friends as much as I wanted to, but I gained a lot more than I ever sacrificed," Taylor said.
Taylor said that preparing for the pageant, along with finishing her paperwork and building a pageant
platform, taught her a lot about time management.
Lewis and Taylor are familiar with the stereotypes that some people have about beauty pageants.
"I think it's hard for people to see the positive things about pageants because we have things like Toddlers and Tiaras," Lewis said.
The Miss Kansas pageant gives out $45 million in tuition scholarship money each year. Lewis earned approximately $10,000 in scholarship money when she won the state title. "This is not a beauty pageant by any means," she said. "It's definitely a scholarship organization."
Another beauty pageant title went to Gentry Miller, 2010 graduate from Wichita, who won the 2012 Miss Kansas USA title. Miller also competed in this year's Miss USA pageant on June 3.
Taylor is an intern at The Willow Domestic Violence center in Lawrence where she is an advocate for her pageant platform, teen dating-violence awareness and prevention. The pageant gave her the opportunity to speak before the senate regarding a bill about dating-violence policies in schools across Kansas.
"I don't think I would have gotten these opportunities without having a title," Taylor said. "I feel like it has benefitted me so much."
CONTRIBUTED PHOTO
Sloane Lewis, a senior from Norwich, is crowned Miss Kansas 2012. Lewis went through the competition with her sorority sister Brooke Taylor.
Miller was a member of the American Business Women's Association and Pi Beta Phi sorority. She said her involvement at KU helped her shaped who she was during the pageant.
"It helped me be a public figure and be someone that could speak to others," she said.
—Edited by Maegan Mathiasmeier
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