Reginald Denny

Twenty years ago today, my hometown burned.

I had moved to Miami the year before and there is, let me tell you, something surreal about watching on television from a continent away as places you've been and streets you know are smashed and burned.

The Los Angeles riots happened because justice did not. They happened because a predominately white jury in the far-flung suburb of Simi Valley looked at video of four white cops bludgeoning a black drunk driving suspect, Rodney G. King, so viciously that even Chief of Police Daryl F. Gates said it made him sick -- and yet, pronounced them not guilty of any crime.

To acknowledge this is not to lionize the rioters. You do not...