More than six hundred UT students, students from Knoxville College, and members of the community demonstrated at a rally that moved from the Volunteer Statue to the university center on May 1, 1992, protesting the April 29 acquittal in a California State Court of four white Los Angeles policemen accused of police brutality in the aftermath of a traffic stop on March 3. Videotape of police Tasering and beating African American Rodney King had been widely shown. The verdicts sparked the Los Angeles riots of 1992 and spawned protests throughout the country. When the group reached the university center, several people spoke about the beatings and the verdicts.