
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, August 18, 1993                   TAG: 9308180138
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE: BALTIMORE                                LENGTH: Short

RODNEY KING JOINS NAACP, WILL WORK IN LA

Rodney King has joined the NAACP and will "work in Los Angeles in the 'hood with us," the Rev. Benjamin Chavis told a group of Baltimore ministers Tuesday.

Chavis, who convened the ministers to promote an NAACP-sponsored 30th anniversary March on Washington, called King a "worldwide symbol of why we need to march."

King was the victim of an infamous beating in 1991 by white Los Angeles police officers.

Chavis, the executive director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said he met King, a former convict who led Los Angeles police on a car chase before the beating, at a dinner in New York on Saturday night and asked him to join the nation's oldest civil rights group.

Chavis said in an interview that King "has become a symbol of fighting injustice, and Rodney King himself has gone through an evolution." - The Baltimore Sun

by CNB