Puts the Rodney King and O. J. Simpson trials under the microscope

Reviews the turbulent events of the Rodney King and O. J. Simpson trials from a social and political framework of race relations and police misconduct. This thought-provoking book shows that the issue of race was at the very heart of both of these emotionally charged cases.

Psychologist and scholar Jewelle Taylor Gibbs shows how King and Simpson have been transformed by their trials into symbols of the different worlds inhabited by blacks and whites in America. Gibbs's compelling analysis of the issues that permeated these trials will challenge even the most cynical observer to rethink any previously held assumptions about race and the criminal justice system.

JEWELLE TAYLOR GIBBS a clinical psychologist and consultant, is Zellerbach Family Fund professor of social policy at the School of Social Welfare, University of California at Berkeley. She is the coauthor of Children of Color (Jossey-Bass, 1989) and the editor of Young, Black, and Male in America: An Endangered Species (Greenwood Press, 1988).