Thirty Years Later: Remembering LA’s 1992 Civil Unrest and Reimagining Social Action

Like the tectonic fault lines that can suddenly release pent-up geological pressures, shaking the literal bedrock of Southern California, the cultural fault lines between groups with unequal political and economic power periodically unleash similarly destructive energy. These moments of civil unrest are the inevitable result of increasing inequality, and they shake the foundations of Southern California’s multiethnic landscape.

As we look back over the 30 years between the civil unrest of April 29, 1992 and Los Angeles’ current cultural landscape, three questions are on our minds: What was Los Angeles like in the years leading up to 1992? What lessons can we learn from efforts to rebuild the city? Who are the agents of positive social change today, especially among organizations rooted in LA’s communities of faith?

This kind of inquiry into the origins and outcomes of the 1992 civil unrest marked the beginning of the USC Center for Religion and Civic Culture (CRCC). CRCC traces its roots to the Religion and Civic Order project, an initiative funded by the Los Angeles-based Haynes Foundation. A pair of USC religious studies scholars explored the prominent role of faith leaders in quelling the violence of April 1992 and rebuilding the city in the months and years that followed. “Politics of the Spirit,” the capstone report for the Religion and Civic Order project, also served as the starting point for CRCC.

Upon the 30 year anniversary of the civil unrest, this report builds upon both “Politics of the Spirit” and “Forging a New Moral and Political Agenda,” the 20-year follow-up on the Religion and Civil Order project. You will find excerpts that are still relevant today, as well as views on the future of social action in Los Angeles. Navigate the menu to the right or continue reading below about:

• Memories of the Unrest
• A Pivotal Figure: The Rev. Dr. Cecil L. Murray
• Old Problems, New Solutions
• The Next Generation: Social Action Today
• Your Reflections: Memories and Lessons

In “Politics of the Spirit,” a Black pastor remarked on the period of time bookended by the Watts Riots of 1965 and the civil unrest of 1992:

“The problems are the same, except they’ve gotten worse.”

Three decades later, the problems persist. Systemic racism, coupled with efforts to protect white privilege through denialism and voter suppression, remains endemic in American politics and institutions. At the same time, collective efforts to mitigate these problems have flourished in Southern California and other parts of the country. And while contemporary antiracism coalitions like Black Lives Matter (BLM) and Dignity and Power Now (DPN) are rooted in network- and movement-building strategies that were catalyzed by the civil unrest of 1992, BLM and DPN include a more philosophically and spiritually diverse cohort of activists than the generations of leaders, largely rooted in the Black Church, that rose to prominence from the 1960s to the 1990s.

These connections to the past as well as the increasing diversity of antiracism efforts in the present were apparent in the mostly peaceful nationwide protests that followed the murders of Breonna Taylor by police in Louisville, KY in early 2020 and George Floyd by Minneapolis police in the summer of that year.

All of these developments suggest that future periods of upheaval remain a possibility along Southern California’s (and the nation’s) racial and economic fault lines, though the networks of social justice organizations, civic leaders, philanthropies and corporate stakeholders that have grown since 1992 may mitigate some of the suffering that civil unrest inevitably entails.

What would a true transformation of American society entail? Some of the voices in the last section of this report—The Next Generation: Social Action Today—suggest possible solutions to the problems that have both motivated and frustrated successive generations of social justice activists. The one constant in our history is that if the dream of a society free from racial injustice continues to be deferred to another time, the fires of conflict will almost certainly erupt again.

In 1965, the LAPD’s beating of a Black man—Marquette Frye—unleashed pent-up rage at police brutality and economic injustice in the city’s African American community, sparking the Watts Riots. Burned-out buildings from that period of civil unrest marred the landscape of South Los Angeles as late as the 1980s.

While the beating of Rodney King in 1991 and the acquittal of the LAPD officers who brutalized him a year later are widely assumed to have been the inciting incidents for the 1992 civil unrest, another, less widely reported story also provided tinder for the flames. Fifteen-year-old Latasha Harlins was shot in the back of the head by a Korean convenience store owner two weeks after the video of Rodney King’s beating was made public. Then a suspended sentence for Harlin’s convicted killer was upheld, allowing the killer to walk free, about a week before Rodney King’s LAPD assailants were acquitted.

These layers of history, trauma and injustice were apparent to the researchers who produced “Politics of the Spirit,” a scholarly account of faith-based networking and organizing in the aftermath of the 1992 civil unrest.

Read “Politics of the Spirit”

First African Methodist Episcopal Church (better known as FAME) in Los Angeles became the de facto headquarters of efforts to manage the city’s collective hurt and outrage following the acquittal of King’s assailants.

As the fires burned, the church had opened its doors to the community, media and officials, providing services and mediating between various stakeholders:

During these terrifying hours, television cameras focused on events at the First African Methodist Episcopal Church, located just off Adams Boulevard in South Central Los Angeles. It was here that Mayor Tom Bradley expressed his outrage at the verdicts delivered in the Rodney King trial by an all-Caucasian jury, which had deliberated in a courtroom barely thirty freeway miles from South Central, yet in another, psychologically distant world.

It was also here in the First AME Church that the Reverend Cecil Murray instantly emerged as the anointed media voice for the city’s minority populations. Speaking out of memories of the 1965 Watts riots, with the demeanor of an individual who was skilled in the making of media events, Murray expressed frustration concerning the fundamental conditions that had kindled the night of fires. And then, in the spirit of the religiously-inspired American civil rights movement, with which he had long been associated, Murray invited the citizens of Los Angeles to join together in acts of reconciliation and healing.

On Sunday, May 3, 1992, the Rev. Cecil Murray addressed his congregation—including Mayor Tom Bradley, representatives from the LAPD and LA City Council, as well as other elected officials—from the pulpit of First African Methodist Episcopal Church (FAME). The electrifying sermon illuminated all of the elements that had provided tinder for the flames as well as the pathway out of the city’s violence and discord.

Watch Rev. Murray’s sermon during the civil unrest (transcript available here):

Significantly, “Politics of the Spirit” uncovered a liberationist ethic among faith groups responding to the civil unrest that crossed traditional conservative and progressive divides:

Liberal to middle-of-the-road religious institutions have tended to emphasize the importance of exercising political power on behalf of oppressed populations. They have been concerned about institutional bias against people who are politically weak. When they have spoken about liberation, they have generally meant political and economic liberation. Conservative religious communities, on the other hand, have emphasized spiritual transformation, one person at a time. They have believed that political systems will be transformed only when morally conscientious people oversee public institutions… Yet in Los Angeles’ religious communities, this distinction hardly makes any sense at all… In the neighborhoods that were most severely affected by the April 29, 1992 uprising, there is a theological coming-together of religious communities around liberationist themes.

That common sense of purpose among a diverse array of faith communities enabled the creation of new coalitions and networks to respond to the needs of marginalized people, both in times of crisis and over the longer term. This development is the key insight offered by “Politics of the Spirit” in the years immediately following the 1992 civil unrest:

Coalitions do not hold together around the production of media events. They hold together when everyone fixes on a concrete political or economic issue and agrees to work on it… We have begun to wonder whether the very title of our Religion and Civic Order project involves a redundancy. In Los Angeles’ central city neighborhoods, religion, by definition, now involves a wide range of human service activities. Religion, by definition, involves commitments to the building of congregation-based forms of civic infrastructure… Religious institutions can plan together. They can pool their resources. Together they can do a far better job in assuming new community-oriented roles than they can do separately.

Read the full report: “Politics of the Spirit”

The USC Center for Religion and Civic Culture asked faith and community leaders to share their reflections on Los Angeles’ 1992 Civil Unrest and the rebuilding efforts that followed. Watch the playlist here:

Thank you to all of the leaders who took the time to reflect with us.

Rev. Dr. Cecil L. “Chip” Murray was already a major force in Los Angeles when the 1992 civil unrest helped raise him to greater prominence. As pastor of First African Methodist Episcopal Church (FAME) and later chair of a program that bears his name at the University of Southern California, Murray catalyzed faith groups to respond to social injustices in Los Angeles.

Watch Rev. Murray’s story:

In 1992, Rev. Murray was 15 years into his 27-year tenure as pastor of the historic First African Methodist Episcopal Church (FAME) in Los Angeles. His distinctive theology of deep personal spirituality combined with socially engaged Christianity, along with his method for church leadership and dynamic preaching, helped him transform a small congregation of 250 members into an 18,000-person megachurch.

Prior to the civil unrest, he and a group of pastors were in conversation with city leaders about the ramifications of a not-guilty verdict. Murray’s influence in the community is why Mayor Tom Bradley came to FAME to share his outrage. The civil unrest amplified his voice from the pulpit and within halls of power. Many politicians, including President George W. Bush and President Bill Clinton, visited Rev. Murray’s pulpit and spoke to the congregation.

Following the unrest, FAME’s multi-million dollar community and economic development programs brought jobs, housing and corporate investment into many South Los Angeles neighborhoods.

At USC, meanwhile, religion professor Donald Miller had seen Rev. Murray on television during the civil unrest and wanted to learn more about the faith communities’ role in rebuilding South LA. He first met with Rev. Murray as part of the Religion and Civic Order project, leading to a decades-long collaboration between the two. Murray and Miller describe the beginning of that collaboration, which resulted in the establishment of the USC Center for Religion and Civic Culture, in this video:

After his retirement from formal ministry in 2004, USC recruited Rev. Murray to become a senior fellow of USC’s Center for Religion and Civic Culture (and eventually chairman of the USC Cecil Murray Center for Community Engagement) as well as the Tansey Chair of Christian Ethics in the School of Religion. In his work at CRCC and the Murray Center, Rev. Murray oversees a training curriculum that has prepared hundreds of ministers and laypeople to make vital contributions to improve their communities.

Rev. Murray remains a vibrant force with a passion to ensure that the legacy of African American church leaders of the Civil Rights era is transmitted to the next generation of community leaders.

Read Rev. Murray’s Memoir: Twice Tested by Fire

Visit Rev. Murray’s Sermon Archive

In 2012—two decades after the 1992 civil unrest—CRCC published “Forging a New Moral and Political Agenda” to track developments that had been uncovered in “Politics of the Spirit.” The networks and coalitions that formed immediately after the civil unrest had tended to dissolve if they were organized around short-term problems, while organizational relationships forged around long-term goals tended to endure. Cynicism toward the possibility of a national political response to racism and social injustice seemed justified, though reframing these obdurate problems as moral rather than political issues seemed to offer some hope that repentance, reconciliation and restitution could be won by activating the liberationist impulses that had held faith-based coalitions together.

Read “Forging a New Moral and Political Agenda”

The social response to the not-guilty verdict in the Rodney King beating trial and the suspended sentence for Latasha Harlins’ killer was a watershed moment that provided an opportunity for congregations and other religious bodies to establish relationships across racial, ethnic and economic divides:

Since 1992, significant demographic and political events have altered the landscape of Los Angeles, and of the faith community. While faith groups have always participated to varying degrees in the public sphere, over the past two decades they have become expected partners in dealing with social issues. This has resulted in a substantial increase in the number of faith-based nonprofit organizations and a diversity of approaches to the problems they seek to address.

In the immediate aftermath of the civil unrest, faith groups established programs to address the symptoms and the underlying social issues of a fractured city. Many of these efforts lasted less than three years, but they accomplished the goal of quelling tensions and expanding interfaith and interethnic understanding. Other efforts had the organizational capacity to sustain coalitions and bolster community development activity.

Between 1995 and 2010, political developments such as Charitable Choice legislation in 1996, the promotion of faith-based initiatives during the administrations of Presidents Bush and Obama, and the needs of overburdened public agencies, have served to increase the public activities of the faith community. These expanded efforts mirror the pluralism in Los Angeles and its inherent complexities.

Nonetheless, the fact that interfaith action seemed most effective when it was organized around specific issues also carried a degree of liability. The keen focus on relatively narrow concerns that cut across constituencies meant that broadening networks and capacities was more difficult:

The net result of the many programs and faith organizations operating across these five general areas—charity, organizing, advocacy, community development and interfaith dialogue—is that there is now a “new normalcy” attached to the inclusion of faith groups in an array of civic efforts across the city and county. Still, networks across the spectrum of the faith community, regardless of which area of activity they emphasize, are, for the most part, closed organizational systems that rarely interact with other networks. Instead, they tend to focus their efforts on particular issues—neighborhood economic development, easing tension between different constituencies, and narrowly defined policy initiatives—that limit the scope of their work.

CRCC’s researchers concluded that realizing the full potential of faith-based networks and coalitions might entail leveraging the moral authority of faith groups to inspire collective action on bigger problems:

Perhaps the most powerful contribution that the faith community can make is to change the civic discourse of Los Angeles by reframing the region’s challenges as issues that demand moral rather than purely political responses…. For example, recent research suggests that the extreme levels of inequality we are seeing now in the U.S. can undermine social trust and community life, effectively corroding society from the inside out. Social unrest and riots are a predictable consequence of failed expectations and dramatic levels of social inequality….

Moral imagination seems to be in short supply these days…. We are in a moral recession, driven by an economic recession, in which people have lost their vision for what is humanly possible….

The faith community has the opportunity to provide a moral frame for seeking solutions to important issues confronting our city rather than simply striving for pragmatic short-term solutions. The reason the great religions have persevered is that their sacred texts and traditions are strewn with examples of moral failure. But it is in the midst of despair that the prophets find their voice. And this is such a time.

These observations about the corrosive effects of inequality, made a decade before the era of the Trump presidency, are even more apt today. The importance of certain faith groups in Trump’s electoral base prompts some important questions: Are faith groups a source of hope in the cause of social justice today or a reason for despair? Both are increasingly true.

Since 2016, some powerful faith groups have shown us the reactionary side of religion. The religious and political movement anchored by an amoral leader utilizes the moral power of faith leaders to mobilize for regressive cultural goals that in reality contradict the religious message of their faith.

At the same time, the last 30 years show how faith groups can come together to meet the challenges presented by racism and economic inequality, and working together—often across faith lines—to develop communities and opportunity.

Read the full report: “Forging a New Moral and Political Agenda”

As part of “Forging a New Moral and Political Agenda,” CRCC created a database of faith-based organizations active in the five areas: charity, organizing, advocacy, community development and interfaith dialogue. Many, though certainly not all of them, continue to be active in 2022.

Find Faith-Based Organizations in Los Angeles

In the decade since CRCC published “Forging a New Moral and Political Agenda,” Los Angeles has seen the development of a new civil rights movement in Black Lives Matter, the resurgence of white supremacy and the Donald Trump presidency, plus a global pandemic. During that time, faith-based social action has expanded and evolved.

The predominant story about religion in the past decade has been about either decline or right-wing Christianity. While a growing number of Americans are not affiliated with faith organizations, CRCC’s research on religion in Los Angeles has found that groups are adapting—finding their vitality not necessarily in the number of congregants attending worship but in how they have embedded their organizations within their local communities in order to make positive social change.

In sharing his model of community development, Rev. Murray has always advocated teaching people not only how to fish, but how to own the pond. An increasing number of faith-based community development corporations, non-profit organizations and social enterprises have embraced this approach. Their efforts seek to bring job training and employment opportunities into communities and empower people with financial literacy. Such efforts give agency to individuals, ultimately allowing them to become less dependent on charity.

Those inspired by faith also seek make change within the halls of power—running for local political offices, expanding interfaith power-building to help move issues forward and using media to speak to social justice issues. Faith leaders understand that they can take their message to the people directly rather than waiting on the media to call them.

Certainly, civil unrest is still in the realm of possibility in the context of increasing inequalities and continued state violence. At the same time, massive protests for social change—such as the 500,000 people immigration rally in 2006, the Occupy movement, the Women’s March in response to Trump’s election, and Black Lives Matter protests—have largely remained non-violent at the urging of activists and faith leaders.

Perhaps the most significant test of this commitment to nonviolent social action came in 2020, just two years before the 30th anniversary of Los Angeles civil unrest. In 2020, the murder of George Floyd at the hands of police in Minneapolis, closely following the murder of Breonna Taylor by police in Louisville, KY, sparked protests nationally. In Los Angeles, businesses boarded up their windows and the Los Angeles Police Department donned riot gear, expecting a repeat of 1992. The mayor’s office called on the Rev. Dr. Najuma Smith-Pollard, spiritual daughter of Rev. Murray, to speak at a press conference broadcast on all major TV stations and social media.

Rev. Smith-Pollard invoked Rev. Murray’s leadership in 1992 in that speech. “Dr. Murray, when he spoke 30 years ago, wanted us to stand and speak and live in power,” she said. “In power, we stand. In power, we speak. In power, we rise up. But power has a responsibility.”

Read it here, or start at 10:40 to hear it:

Despite some looting and violence, the scale of peaceful protests far eclipsed any destruction. Police efforts to control the crowds were seen as overreaction and unnecessary aggression.

A year later when a verdict was due for Derek Chauvin, the police officer who killed George Floyd, Rev. Smith-Pollard published an OpEd about how she and other faith leaders were following in the footsteps of Rev. Murray by gathering for the verdict. “We will be there to process our collective pain and focus our passion on continuing to build a better future,” she wrote.

Whether or not faith leaders and activists in Los Angeles today explicitly trace their work back to the organizing following the 1992 civil unrest, Rev. Murray and his many partners’ efforts to rebuild the city lay the groundwork for their work today.

The Next Generation

Below are current examples of faith organizations doing the work of social justice and community development in Southern California. Some emerged out of the 1992 civil unrest, some of them directly descend from Rev. Murray’s example, and others have developed out of the context of a broadened landscape for faith groups to be active in the public square.

Faith and Community Empowerment (FACE LA), originally Korean Churches for Community Development, connects churches with resources to pursue community development and civic engagement work. Its founder, Hyepin Im, learned about the role that churches could play in uplifting their communities working with Rev. Cecil Murray and Rev. Mark Whitlock at FAME following the civil unrest.

Members of The Row, the “Church Without Walls,” congregate on the corner of Wall St. and Winston St. in the middle of downtown LA’s Skid Row every Friday night. Pastor Cue Jn-Marie, an alumnus of the USC Murray Center, uses his training to engage with city leaders about racial and economic justice and the future of the Skid Row neighborhood. He also opened The Hip Hop Smoothie Shop, a social enterprise serving the Skid Row and other under-resourced communities.

Centro de Vida Victoriosa, an Assemblies of God ministry in East Los Angeles, launched Instituto de Avance Latino Community Development Corporation (“IDEAL CDC”) to bring economic and community development programs to its community. For instance, the Ideal Wealth Academy offers financial management coaching to parents and teens together. Pastors Carlos and Amparo Rincon and IDEAL’s executive director Dorima Rincon-Hamilton have all participated in the USC Murray Center’s programming. Read more about their work in CRCC’s report “Community Transformation: Outlining a Process for Change.”

Dignity and Power Now (DPN), a grassroots organization in Los Angeles, works to end mass incarceration. In this video, leaders and participants describe how they have created a new spiritual community through this Black Lives Matter-affiliated organization. Its leaders have sought the counsel of Rev. Murray, even as its practice of “radical inclusion” and embrace of female and queer leadership disrupts a legacy of largely male, heteronormative leadership in traditional Black faith groups. DPN represents the front lines of new community development, founded on notions of self-care, resilience and transformative justice, and rooted in new conceptions of spirituality and activism.

Pico-Union Project is a community center built in a synagogue-turned-church, bought in 2012 by Craig Taubman, a Jewish artist and performer. It has incubated several Jewish, Muslim and Christian congregations. Located in a diverse and economically challenged neighborhood, it provides weekly distribution of free fresh produce, mentoring for high school students, art programs and concerts and assistance for homeless neighbors. When Taubman was considering buying the building, he looked to the example of Rev. Murray and Rev. Whitlock and sought their counsel. Their encouragement was instrumental in Taubman’s starting the Pico-Union Project. Rev. Murray was honored with Pico-Union Project’s 2022 Visionary Award.

5,000 Pies is an example of how a faith group can improve their community through social enterprise, an increasing trend in social action today. The small, storefront restaurant is operated by Fountain of Life Covenant Church in a multi-ethnic and economically challenged neighborhood on the west side of Long Beach, California. The pizza place allows the church to serve the needs of its community, with not only good food but also job training, mentoring and life skills for young adults.

Matthew25/Mateo25 is an evangelical organization that seeks to support immigrants, started in response to anti-immigrant policies enacted by the Trump administration. Engaging both immigrant and non-immigrant churches, Matthew25 responds to both the immediate needs (housing, direct services, trauma counseling) and legal needs of asylum seekers and families facing separation through deportation. They also conduct education, leadership development and policy advocacy as part of their work to support immigrants.

Finally, longstanding groups—LA Voice, CLUE-LA (Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice) and OneLA—are active in promoting an interfaith moral agenda in Los Angeles through community organizing, policy advocacy and training and education for faith leaders and communities. LA Voice and OneLA both existed before 1992, but became major forces following the civil unrest. The organizing of clergy to back a living wage law at the Los Angeles city council in 1996 led to the formation of CLUE. As part of their effort today, faith leaders sought to correct the inequities that led to the unrest through public policy advocacy.

Today, city leaders, policy makers and the public have come to expect faith actors to be involved in community development and civic engagement efforts. At the same time, the expectation that faith communities will do the work of caring for the most vulnerable comes with little support, either in the form of resources or education about how to carry out community development work. Moreover, clergy and lay leaders often see this work as ancillary to the business of running a congregation.

As CRCC has for the last 25 years, we will continue to work with faith groups that seek to live out their beliefs and commitments—both spiritual and social—to confront current inequalities and to bring positive change to the lives of individuals and the communities in which they live, work and worship.

Dornsife Dialogues

The USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences invited CRCC’s Najuma Smith-Pollard to moderate a discussion the causes and legacy of Los Angeles’ 1992 Civil Unrest. Watch it here:

For five days in late 1992, Los Angeles was in the grip of civil unrest that led to significant death and destruction, causing the mayor to declare a state of emergency. The uprising followed the acquittal of four LAPD officers charged with using excessive force in the brutal, videotaped beating of a Black man named Rodney King. How can the lessons from this event continue to heal and improve society today?

Watch this engaging discussion with:

• Rev. Najuma Smith-Pollard (moderator), assistant director of community and public engagement at the USC Dornsife Center for Religion & Civic Culture
• Manuel Pastor, director of the USC Dornsife Equity Research Institute, Professor of USC Sociology and American Studies and Ethnicity, and Turpanjian Chair in Civil Society and Social Change at USC Dornsife
• George Sanchez, director of the Center for Diversity and Democracy and USC American Studies & Ethnicity professor.

Community Stories for Policy Change

In times of turmoil, storytelling can be a catalyst for policy change as well as a symbol for healing and resistance. As we recognize the 30th anniversary of the Los Angeles Uprising, a defining moment in our history, Lora King, Shinese Harlins-Kilgore, the Rev. Dr. Najuma Smith-Pollard and Dr. Allissa V. Richardson for a vibrant discussion on the intergenerational impact of storytelling and its symbiotic relationship with public policy. Dr. Erroll Southers moderated the discussion.

This event was presented by the USC Black Alumni Association, the USC Dornsife Center for the Political Future, the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy, and the USC Price Safe Communities Institute.

The following opinion article was published by Religion News Service. 

30 years after Rodney King unrest, one faith leader’s vision still inspires LA

(RNS) — Thirty years ago, Los Angeles was burning. On April 29, 1992, Los Angeles police officers who had brutally beaten Rodney King, an unarmed man pulled over on suspicion of DUI, were acquitted of using excessive force.

Five months before, the convenience store owner who killed 15-year-old Latasha Harlins had been given a suspended sentence and minimally fined. The acquittals in the King case were the last straw. The city’s minority and economically marginalized communities saw that they could never get justice.

After decades of mistreatment by the LAPD — and decades of being forced from their homes to make room for freeways, denied mortgages, kept out of certain neighborhoods, kept in a failed educational system and more, all intended to “keep them in their place” — the Black and brown communities were so desperate for change that they were willing to burn down their own communities.

When the smoke cleared, 63 people had been killed, 2,383 had been injured, more than 12,000 had been arrested and hundreds of businesses had been looted and burned, with estimates of property damage at more than $1 billion.

The Rev. Cecil L. “Chip” Murray, pastor at First AME Church, remarked from his pulpit in the middle of the violence, “We may have set those fires, but we didn’t start those fires.”

In the years that followed, it was Murray who emerged as the conscience of the city and a leader of a bottom-up, faith-based movement for change, setting an example for social action for justice and urban community development across the country.

Anticipating the violence, Murray had devised a visionary plan for the faith community to lead efforts to bring about positive and lasting social change in the city. The plan included preaching about the problems in the city to raise the consciousness of church members and organizing with community activists and congregations across faith traditions.

He took the call of anyone who wanted to work toward improving the city. He partnered with anyone who had access to resources that could bring about the necessary change, whether a bank, a corporation, celebrities or the federal government. Solutions were decided collectively, and issues were confronted directly in meetings with elected officials and policymakers.

The result was a flourishing of interreligious activism in the civic sphere. Murray’s own FAME Renaissance, the community development corporation affiliated with First AME, was the most prominent example. FAME Renaissance worked with public and private actors to bring jobs, housing and opportunity to neighborhoods in South Los Angeles.

In the 30 years since the uprising, many more faith-based organizations have entered the public sphere in Los Angeles, each working to create a better, more just city with increased opportunity for all. At the USC Center for Religion and Civic Culture, we have documented the public role of the faith community in LA’s civic life since 1992 and worked with groups who are motivated by their spirituality to create positive social change for the city’s people.

The faith community’s contribution to the civic culture of Los Angeles has been enormous, and as a result most public agencies now recognize the necessity of engaging with the variety of faith communities to improve the lives of the most vulnerable.

Murray has always advocated teaching people not only how to fish, but how to own the pond. An increasing number of faith-based community development corporations, nonprofit organizations and social enterprises have embraced this approach to bring job training and employment opportunities into communities and empower individuals and families with financial literacy.

Those inspired by faith also seek to make change within the halls of power — running for local political offices, expanding interfaith power-building and using media to speak to social justice issues.

Despite the progress made since 1992, many of the same problems that drove that year’s unrest persist three decades later. Systemic racism, coupled with recent efforts to protect white privilege through denialism and voter suppression, remain endemic in American politics and institutions.

Since 2016, powerful faith groups — some with deep histories in LA — have joined with the larger Christian nationalist movement to oppose social change that would result in a broader social equity. Their regressive social and cultural goals contradict the message of their faith, diminishing further the appeal of organized religion among younger generations.

These developments promise future upheaval along Southern California’s, and the nation’s, racial and economic fault lines.

But the last 30 years also show how faith groups can come together to meet the challenges of racism and economic inequality by working across faith lines to develop new movements and networks. That can be traced to the groundwork laid in the aftermath of the 1992 unrest. Now that work has been passed to a new generation of leaders who learn from each other as they pursue their important work.

The stakes are high. Powerful religious figures and organizations are actively working against these efforts. Their ultimate success will be determined by our collective response — including by members and faith institutions of the white majority, whose interests are privileged by current systems and institutions — to decide to pursue some form of restorative justice that seeks to make our fellow citizens and communities whole. Are we up to the challenge?