L.A. Burning: The Riots 25 Years Later

A chronicle of the rise and fall of O.J. Simpson, whose high-profile murder trial exposed the extent of American racial tensions, revealing a fractured and divided nation.

In April 1992, following the notorious Rodney King verdict, the streets of Los Angeles became a battlefield, the backdrop to four personal intertwined stories.

A young teacher inspires her class of at-risk students to learn tolerance, apply themselves, and pursue education beyond high school.

Set during the Rodney King riots, a robbery homicide investigation triggers a series of events that will cause a corrupt LAPD officer to question his tactics.

In 1987, five young men, using brutally honest rhymes and hardcore beats, put their frustration and anger about life in the most dangerous place in America into the most powerful weapon they had: their music. Taking us back to where it all began, Straight Outta Compton tells the true story of how these cultural rebels—armed only with their lyrics, swagger, bravado and raw talent—stood up to the authorities that meant to keep them down and formed the world’s most dangerous group, N.W.A. And as they spoke the truth that no one had before and exposed life in the hood, their voice ignited a social revolution that is still reverberating today.

A police raid in Detroit in 1967 results in one of the largest citizens' uprisings in the history of the United States.

During a 10-year sentence for murdering the leader of a rival South Central Los Angeles gang, Bobby Johnson finds religion and rehabilitation with the help of Muslim inmate Ali. Upon his release, Bobby returns home to find that his young son, Jimmie, has joined the Deuces, his old crew. Tensions rise as Bobby struggles to convince Jimmie to leave the gang that was his only family during the painful years his absent father spent behind bars.

25 years ago, four LAPD officers were acquitted in a state court for beating King, sparking three days of rioting that left 53 people dead. Now, around the anniversary, this Spike Lee-produced one-man show (Roger Guenver Smith) will be streaming on Netflix. A complex, semi-tragic figure, King drowned in 2012. His life was rarely smooth, or simple – its telling makes for a sober, moving watch.

Harvey Milk was an outspoken human rights activist and one of the first openly gay U.S. politicians elected to public office; even after his assassination in 1978, he continues to inspire disenfranchised people around the world.

When Lonnie Franklin Jr. was arrested in South Central Los Angeles in 2010 as the suspected murderer of a string of young black women, police hailed it as the culmination of 20 years of investigations. Four years later documentary filmmaker Nick Broomfield took his camera to the alleged killer’s neighborhood for another view.

Documents the race riot of 1921 and the destruction of the African-American community of Greenwood in Tulsa, Oklahoma. With testimony by eyewitnesses and background accounts by historians.

Leon Watkins runs a community helpline in South Central LA, where anyone in need of help is welcome. One of his most frequent visitors is local gang leader, John Wesley Hunter, otherwise known as “Joker” to the streets. After a day of hustling and almost losing his life in a shoot-out, Joker goes to the one place where he knows he can get help. All in a typical day’s work for Leon until an unlikely woman shows up insisting on aiding him in his fight for his community. This unlikely team defies social constructs by working together to actively fight oppression and gain nation-wide recognition for a hidden reality of many. Along their way they experience the deep-seeded hatred that has plagued America, great love, and tragedy as they leave behind a legacy.

Executive produced by NBA superstar and philanthropist Russell Westbrook, and directed by Peabody and Emmy-Award® winning director Stanley Nelson (“Freedom Riders”) and Peabody and duPont-Award winner Marco Williams (“Two Towns of Jasper”), the documentary commemorates the 100th anniversary of the horrific Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921, one of the worst acts of racial violence in American history, and calls attention to the previously ignored but necessary repair of a town once devastated.

An in-depth and provocative look at the 1992 Los Angeles riots exploring the roots of civil unrest in California and the relationship between African Americans and LAPD.

Twenty-five years after the verdict in the Rodney King trial sparked several days of protests, violence and looting in Los Angeles, LA 92 immerses viewers in that tumultuous period through stunning and rarely seen archival footage.

Burke's Law, a revival of the 1960s cop television series of the same name, aired on CBS from 1994 to 1995. The series centers on Amos Burke, a senior Los Angeles police officer and millionaire, and his son, Peter, who is a detective under his command.

From the tony Beverly Hills to the seedy side of Hollywood, LAPD’s elite Robbery Homicide Division is on the case. Fusing classic ripped-from-the-headlines storytelling with the backdrop of LA, the series delves into the high profile crimes of the west coast.

The story of an inner-city Los Angeles police precinct where some of the cops aren't above breaking the rules or working against their associates to both keep the streets safe and their self-interests intact.

Los Angeles. 1983. A storm is coming and its name is crack. Set against the infancy of the crack cocaine epidemic and its ultimate radical impact on the culture as we know it, the story follows numerous characters on a violent collision course.

The misadventures of a cantankerous junk dealer and his frustrated son.

The definitive story of the Civil Rights era from the point of view of the ordinary men and women whose extraordinary actions launched a movement that changed the fabric of American life, and embodied a struggle whose reverberation continue to be felt today.

Police Detective Sgt. Joe Friday and his partners investigate crimes in Los Angeles.

A two-part miniseries. Dramatizes the events leading up to the 1954 Supreme Court decision on school desegregation, "Brown vs. Board of Education."

Over a two-year period, filmmakers embedded with cops in Flint, Michigan, reveal a department grappling with volatile issues in untenable conditions.

An in-depth look at how racial tensions and hate crimes are impacting communities in the United States and Europe, and how community members are confronting the problem and fighting back.

Fauna Hodel, who was given away by her teenage birth mother, begins to investigate the secrets to her past, following a sinister trail that swirls ever closer to an infamous Hollywood gynecologist connected to the legendary Black Dahlia murder.

When a former high-ranking NYPD officer becomes the first female Chief of Police for Los Angeles, she uses her unflinching honesty and hardball tactics to navigate the social, political and national security issues that converge with enforcing the law.

Henry Louis Gates Jr., Harvard's chair of Afro-American Studies, travels the length and breadth of the United States to take the temperature of black America at the start of the new century. He explores this rich and diverse landscape, social as well as geographic, and meets the people who are defining black America, from the most famous and influential to those at the grassroots.

The story of the rise and fall of the Baltimore Police Department's Gun Trace Task Force — and the corruption and moral collapse that befell an American city in which the policies of drug prohibition and mass arrest were championed at the expense of actual police work.

This psychological thriller follows two Navajo police officers, Leaphorn and Chee, in the 1970s Southwest as their search for clues in a grisly double murder case forces them to challenge their own spiritual beliefs and come to terms with the trauma of their pasts.