For Many, It’s as Simple as Black and White

Once again the outcome galvanized and divided the nation, playing out as a surreal tale of race and celebrity in America.

This time, though, as a mostly white jury held O.J. Simpson accountable for the deaths of his former wife and her friend, it was the black community that was left somber and cynical.

There was a greater sense of inevitability among many blacks interviewed Tuesday than was expressed by whites in 1995, when Simpson was cleared of double-murder charges at his criminal trial.

“I probably feel the way that people felt with the first jury,” said Kyrha Dahan, 38, an African American acting teacher outside the Magic Johnson Theatres in the Crenshaw district. “White people said . . . [a mostly] all-black jury couldn’t come back with a fair verdict. I think an all-white jury couldn’t be fair.”

At the courthouse in Santa Monica, a large, mostly white crowd cheered wildly for the family of Ronald Goldman and taunted the departing Simpson with shouts of “killer! killer!” The crowd’s elation paralleled the widely televised nationwide reactions among many groups of blacks to the criminal trial verdicts.

Yvonne Adler of West Los Angeles broke down in tears of joy and huddled in a circle with her friends, crying and hugging them as she repeated, again and again, “12-0, 12-0.”

“This is personal,” Adler said. “This shows me that a man who does something like this has been exposed and found guilty.”

At the Boulevard Cafe in the Crenshaw district, the mostly African American clientele expressed dismay but little surprise.

The cafe’s owner, 63-year-old Frank Holoman, stressed that the new verdicts were wrong and attributed the decision to racial motives.

“He was judged innocent in his criminal trial. They had to find a way to get him, and this is how they got him,” he said. “He’ll be a target as long as he lives.

“Here in America, black people have always had to accept the verdict of white jurors--even when people were totally innocent and sent to jail,” he said. “So we should have accepted the verdict of the first jury. But white America was not ready to accept this.”

The racial divisions in the case were blurred to some extent by Simpson’s wealth and celebrity.

In the mostly black Potrero Hill section of San Francisco, where Simpson grew up in a housing project, a number of residents gathered at a recreation center to await the verdicts while 25-year-old cabinetmaker Jose Torres played basketball with friends.

“They had a lot of evidence against him. I knew he did it in the first place,” Torres said. “If you’ve got money, you can do anything in the world. . . . His fame saved him from going to prison.”

Some in the recreation center said they were tired of the case--and tired of reporters who only visit their community to ask about Simpson.

“I like O.J. But if he messed up, he messed up,” said Kerry Dolford. “I feel like this: The good Lord takes care of all of it. If O.J. did it, it’s gonna eat him up inside.”

Even so, in many black neighborhoods the bitterness ran deep.

“The justice system just pocketed O.J.,” said one man at a Crenshaw beauty shop. “White America, shame on you. Black power!”

“There are some deep wounds that were created by both of these trials . . . a line in the sand that still divides us,” John Mack of the Los Angeles Urban League told television interviewers. “I don’t think this decision is necessarily going to widen the wounds, [but] it didn’t heal anything. . . .”

Two jurors from the criminal trial--one black, one white, but both of whom had voted for acquittal 16 months ago--split on Tuesday’s verdicts.

“I love it. I couldn’t be happier,” said Anise Aschenbach, a 62-year-old white woman who said she thought Simpson was guilty but felt compelled by jury instructions to acquit him. “It conflicts with our verdicts, but it sure doesn’t conflict with the way I felt inside about whether he did the crime.

“I always had that feeling that he did it,” she said. “In the criminal trial it had to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. That is the difference between then and now. They [civil jurors] only needed 51%, plus they had some additional evidence that I thought was important too.

“It has nagged me that [Fred Goldman] felt that he hasn’t had 12 people say that O.J. killed his son. This will mean some closure.”

But her fellow juror, Yolanda Crawford, who is black, said she was shocked that the civil jury even reached a verdict, let alone a unanimous one. “I thought they’d definitely end in a mistrial or a hung jury,” she said.

“I still feel good about my decision. I still believe there was reasonable doubt,” she said.

Crawford stressed that she did not believe either jury was swayed by racial prejudice. “Race was not a part of our verdict. I don’t think race was a part of this verdict,” she said.

The racial split was dramatically underscored by a citywide Los Angeles Times poll conducted after the jury began deliberating. Overall, the poll found that 55% of the respondents believe Simpson killed his former wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and Goldman, while 22% believed he did not kill them, and 23% were undecided. However, the results differed sharply according to race: 71% of whites said they thought Simpson committed the murders, while 70% of blacks said they thought he was innocent.

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Some who gathered to cheer outside the courthouse saw more than racial overtones to the case; they also recognized it as an unofficial referendum on domestic violence and the women’s movement.

“I am so ecstatic,” said Cardanne Sudderth, a 44-year-old arborist from Santa Monica. “I feel like women’s rights everywhere have been vindicated. In a lot of ways, Nicole represented all of us.”

Still, there were dissenters--mainly a smaller number of blacks in the crowd.

“The best thing of all, O.J. is still free,” said Molly Bell, 50, of Compton, finding some consolation in the results while she waved a large sign that read: “OJ is Not Guilty.”

As Simpson climbed down the stairs into a big black Chevy Suburban waiting outside the courthouse, more than a thousand people watched his exit, and the crowd broke into chants of “guilty guilty guilty.” Others yelled “murderer” and “loser.” Placards read: “OJ, what next? Golf?” and “Out of jail but you’ll never be free.”

An armada of helicopters followed Simpson to his Brentwood estate, where police cordoned away crowds and manned a command post with patrol cars and motorcycles. Some of those who gathered to watch expressed support for him and criticized jurors.

“They were prejudiced,” said Carol Johnson, 29, a Los Angeles resident who is black. “I think they went with their feelings based on their culture, their race. I think they wanted to hear a guilty verdict so they could feel satisfied.”

Others, though, expressed more suspicious attitudes, saying, in effect, that if the Bruno Maglis fit, Simpson ought to wear them.

“Yes! Yes! Finally he’s responsible, I’ve got goose bumps,” called out Nancy O’Leary, 51, who was visiting from North Carolina. “Anyone with any kind of intelligence had to come up with a ‘liable’ judgment. I think this says a lot about the plight of battered women in our country who have to put up with abuse.”

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Back at the Boulevard Cafe, Dorothy Walker, 54, a resident of the well-to-do View Park neighborhood, said the civil trial jury was prejudiced against Simpson from the start and accused Judge Hiroshi Fujisaki of making faulty rulings.

“There is no justice,” said Walker, who said she has hundreds of videocassetes of last year’s criminal proceeding and piles of Simpson-related books and newspaper clippings.

She stressed that she felt a special affinity for Simpson because her own son is married to a white woman. “By the grace of God, he could be accused of something,” she said of her son. “I’ve seen that kind of prejudice.”

“I just hope the O.J. thing is over now,” said Rhonita Thornton, 32, who works at a computer company and lives in the Miracle Mile district. “It’s not for me to say right from wrong. That’s the verdict they came up with.”

Many at the Potrero Hill gym, which still displays faded black and white photos of Simpson, noted bitterly that Simpson has had little to do with his old neighborhood for years.

“I think it’s a little silly reporters coming up like this,” complained Elaine Usher. “Nobody knows him here.”

Simpson spent much more of his time at the exclusive Riviera County Club in Pacific Palisades, where he was once a member. Some members there clinked glasses and gave thumbs-up signs as they watched the verdict at the cozy first-floor bar.

The bartender said the club--where members want to avoid the spotlight--was glad the ordeal was over. “I think 90% thought he was guilty in the first place,” he said. “Everybody is just so sick of this.”

One member said club management has been on edge ever since Simpson became a suspect in the murders. “I used to sit in this room and play cards with the man,” one member said. “I feel bad about it.”

On KABC-AM (710), two African American attorneys belligerently argued the merits of the evidence and the meaning of the verdicts.

Civil rights attorney Leo Terrell, a strong supporter of Simpson, dismissed the case as “a money lawsuit. It’s not justice,” he said, barking over callers who used that word. “It’s money. M-O-N-E-Y.”

A black caller, Rod, from Compton, criticized Terrell’s allegiance to Simpson: “Leo, you know that man is guilty. The black community--”

“Who represents the black community?” Terrell interrupted. “What determines a black man? I am a lawyer. Ninety percent of all lawyers in this nation are white, am I trying to be white? Define ‘community.’ ”

At that point the show’s host, Larry Elder, also an attorney, derided Simpson’s relationship with Los Angeles’ black community. “Simpson couldn’t find Crenshaw with a road map,” he said.

In a pub on the student commons at USC, where Simpson first rose to fame during his collegiate football career, the verdicts were well received by a small crowd of mostly white students.

Sitting beneath a framed replica of Simpson’s USC football jersey, second-year law student Andrew Cherrick shouted, “Squeeze ‘the Juice,’ ” as he waved his fist at the television.

“This verdict is just one trial too late,” Cherrick grumbled.