(Excerpted from a 21st-Century history of Los...

(Excerpted from a 21st-Century history of Los Angeles.)

Tracing the origins of social movements is like tracing the source of a great river. There is no one source, but a multitude of rivulets, then creeks, that feed into the main channel. And before that, an immeasurable number of raindrops and snowflakes, which the historian may compare to tiny shifts of attitude within individual minds.

As 1992 ended, Los Angeles was still in shock from the violence of the previous spring. And the state of California was gripped by a six-year drought.

The city lay--as it still lies--in a dry place at the foot of great pipelines that bring in water from the High Sierra and the State Water Project. Without moisture to flow though it, all this machinery is useless. To extend our metaphor, the even more elaborate machinery of government and business, the pipeline of jobs and services, was crippled because the flow of goodwill (not to mention money) through it had slowed to a trickle.

Then, in late December and early January, snow fell. The fiercest blizzards in years swept the northern mountains, piling up drifts that promised, come spring, to melt into torrents and fill the reservoirs, reactivate the pipelines. The snowflake that landed in the Siskiyous might take months to emerge as water in Los Angeles. But it would come. Its very falling ensured that.

Of course, at that point nobody knew for sure whether these storms weren’t just another false promise, to be followed by more drought.

In the desert of Los Angeles’ civic morale, nothing as dramatic as a blizzard occurred. But here and there, raindrops and snowflakes fell. For example, there was the ninth annual Ecumenical Black Campus Ministry Scholarship Luncheon at 11:30 a.m. Thursday, Jan. 14, 1993, in the Ackerman Union Grand Ballroom at UCLA.

The theme of the luncheon was “The Struggle Continues . . . A Time for New Commitment.” Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. of Rebuild L.A. was keynote speaker. KNBC-TV’s Linda Alvarez was mistress of ceremonies. Donation was $25. For reservations, people called Reginald Zachery at (310) 206-5823.

Scholarships were awarded to UCLA students of all ethnic backgrounds.

The event honored the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who in the 1960s had broken the dams of prejudice and unleashed a flood of goodwill. That channel had since silted up, but it still seemed a likely course for the waters of healing to irrigate the more complex ethnic landscape of Los Angeles in the ‘90s--if enough other raindrops and snowflakes fell.

Of course, at that point nobody knew for sure whether they would. . . .