Over the years Off-Ramp was on the air, LA City Archivist Michael Holland researched, wrote, and narrated many pieces for the show that used the city archive to illuminate aspects of the city's history most people have forgotten or don't know in the first place ... like Mayor Fletcher Bowron's active campaign against Japanese-Americans during World War Two. Bowron, who lived from 1887-1968 and was mayor from 1938-1953, used radio to drive his point home, and the transcripts of his speeches aren't pretty.

This time, we'll hear Holland's piece from 2017, and from the same year, George Takei telling us what happened to his family when FDR signed his infamous Executive Order 9066.

Note: "Internment" was, of course, a euphemism, so politicians and others didn't have to say they were putting innocent people in prison. Our policy at KPCC is to call it "incarceration." 

Support for this podcast is made possible by Gordon and Dona Crawford, who believe that quality journalism makes Los Angeles a better place to live; and bythe Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people.

(Off-Ramp theme music by Fesliyan Studios.)

(This is the second part of a two-part episode.)

This time, we mark the 30th anniversary of one of the darkest days in LA history: Friday, April 29, 1992, when the all-white Simi Valley jury found 4 LAPD officers not guilty in the beating of Rodney King. Rage, protests, and violence, broke out across the city and lasted for days.

Five years ago on Off-Ramp, we marked the 25th anniversary with a full hour of interviews, archival footage, and an unflinching reckoning of the LAPD and its legacy of violence. We wound up with an interview with the late Rodney King.

That's what we're going to listen back to on this episode, but please remember that a lot has changed in five years, and one of them is that as a newsroom - like a lot of other newsrooms around the country - we at KPCC and LAist no longer use the phrase LA Riots.

While riotis used historically, we cannot ignore the media's role in popularizing a term that is now often used as a dog whistle for race. Words like response, unrest, or uprising encourage our audiences to think deeper about its origins.

Support for this podcast is made possible by Gordon and Dona Crawford, who believe that quality journalism makes Los Angeles a better place to live; and bythe Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people.

(Off-Ramp theme music by Fesliyan Studios.)

A Forefather of Modern Art in Southern California; Modern Love; Cool Curator; Cool Living; Are Black People Cooler than Whites?; Stone Cold; Where's the Future?; More Jazz at the Getty; Ahmad Jamal; Not Ruby Tuesday, Ruby Restaurant; A Trumpet in Every Pot

Careful Where You Point That Thing!; Twelve Tones, Hanging Ten; Hail, Little Caesar; How Green Was My Valley?; Say It Is So; Clippers' Main Man; Mariachis on the Move; The Closer's Closet; The Wagonmaster

Off-Ramp Goes Live to Report on the Fires

Vartabedian Handicap; Galileo at the Skirball; Taco Shop Memories; Puppets of Japan; Gunning for 100 and Still Pushing Art; Commuters looking for Community; I Am a Man Now; Hallowed Ground; From New York to LA; Birth of the Cool; Listener Comment

Wine Country: Echo Park; Wine Country: Slow Pickings; Wine Country: A Tasting; With Mallets of Forethought; United in Hate; Sisyphus has his rock and Alys his bug; Spider Pavilion; Spider's Web Snares Genius; Homeboy is Here To Stay; Wes Parker Reflects on Baseball; Listener Call: LAX Pylons

Soundtrack of Your Life; Song Stories; Going Super Sonic; Jobbing at the County Fair; Sad Life, Great Writer; Film, Music, Art and Sport?; Not The End; Getty Receives the Go on Antiquities; Solar Convention in Long Beach; You're listening...

Commentator Garrison Keillor; Art Tatum Rises ; California Canon; Unsung Beat; Skid Row Seafood Joint; The Straight Bacon; Whiskey Runs with Queena; From OC to Iraq; On The Gritty Side

Sentimental Kendt; Jerry Stahl on "Love Without"; All You Can't Eat; Anime Bento; Airport Beautification; Yogathon Habitat; Mix Tapes; Firehouse Cooks; Culture Clash's Zorro in Hell; Bike On