To many Black Americans, the O.J. Simpson trial was about more than the verdict

The O.J. Simpson trial and the reactions to his acquittal revealed the trench-like division between white and Black America in a time shortly after the 1992 L.A. Riots

On Oct. 3, 1995, Black residents in parts of Los Angeles spilled out onto the street, cheering and passing celebratory drinks. The world had just learned that O.J. Simpson had been acquitted of double murder.

“Everybody was running out of their house, screaming and happy,” recalled journalist and cultural critic Jasmyne Cannick, who was a teenager living near Compton when the verdict came down. “I remember that. People had been glued to their television sets” for months on end, wondering where the jury would land.

The celebratory scene in Cannick’s neighborhood that day was duplicated in Black communities across the country, as the nearly yearlong so-called Trial of the Century came to an end. Simpson, then a movie star and a beloved former football player, was acquitted of murder charges in the death of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman. 

The reaction to the verdict was far different among white Americans, revealing the trench-like racial divisions that were roiling the nation at the time. In 1994, 22% of Black respondents to a Washington Post-ABC News poll said they thought Simpson was guilty of the charges, versus 63% of white people. As time went on, particularly after Simpson was found liable in 1997 in a civil case brought by the Brown and Goldman families, 57% of Black people in 2015 said they thought he was guilty. Eighty-three percent of white people agreed. 

“White people were like ‘guilty guilty guilty’ — there were families that broke up, and family members who would not speak to each other over the O.J. Simpson case,” Cannick said. “It was as vicious as the Trump situation. People just felt so strongly one way or the other.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/oj-simpson-trial-verdict-black-americans-rcna147414

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