On tour promoting his new book, Rodney King, the Los Angeles man whose videotaped beating by Los Angeles police became a flashpoint for the 1992 LA riots, is often asked to put his ordeal into contemporary terms. On the 20th anniversary of the riots, the name Mr. King often mentions is Trayvon Martin, the 17-year-old Florida boy who was shot and killed on Feb. 26 by a suspicious neighborhood watch volunteer named George Zimmerman. The police’s original decision to not charge Mr. Zimmerman with a crime again raised questions about the treatment of black men by police and the courts,...
