The Revs. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson are set to speak at a memorial Saturday for Rodney King before his burial today.
A 2 p.m. service is scheduled at the Hall of Liberty at Forest Lawn in the Hollywood Hills, King family spokeswoman Kali Bowyer said. Also scheduled to speak are screenwriter and producer Deidra Wayans and Pacifica radio host Margaret Prescod.
King, whose videotaped beating by Los Angeles police officers and the subsequent acquittal of the officer who beat him led to the 1992 Los Angeles riots, which started on April 29 and raged unchecked for three days.
King, who was later awarded $3.8 million in a lawsuit against the police department, continued to get in trouble with law enforcement over the next two decades. King, known to friends and family as Glen, his middle name, apparently was unable to give up alcohol.
On June 17 about 5:25 a.m., his fiancee, Cynthia Kelley -- she was among the 12 jurors who awarded him damages -- called 911 from the Rialto home the two shared and frantically reported that King was in the bottom of the pool.
King became a household name after George Holliday videotaped him being beaten by four Los Angeles police officers on March 3, 1991.
The following spring, a Simi Valley jury would acquit the officers of wrongdoing, touching off the rioting in which thousands of buildings were burned and looted and 53 people died. The loss was put at $1 billion.
On the third day of rioting, he appeared on live television and famously pleaded "Can we all get along?"
In an interview with National Public Radio on the 20th anniversary of the riots in April, King said his flight from police was caused by a desire to avoid a drunken driving arrest on a night before he had to go to work.
"My family, everything that I had been working hard for since I'd been out of jail, my whole life was like flashed in front of me," King told NPR. "I made a bad mistake by running from them.
(Check for traffic delays in the Studio City and North Hollywood area on Saturday afternoon, click on the COMMUTE tab above for the latest.)
