In The Contested Murder of Latasha Harlins, Stevenson explores the long-simmering resentment within LA's black community that ultimately erupted in April 1992 by focusing on an preceding event that encapsulated the growing racial and social polarization in the city over the course of the 1980s and early 1990s: the 1991 shooting of a fifteen-year old African American girl, Latasha Harlins, by a Korean grocer who suspected Harlins of shoplifting.

Brenda Stevenson is Professor of History at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her books include The Journals of Charlotte Forten Grimke and Life in Black and White: Family and Community in the Slave South, selected as an Outstanding Book by the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Human Rights in North America.

• 1. 'Tasha: "Always Energetic, Positive, Full of Energy"


• 2. Soon Ja Du: "She Had a Good Life in Korea"


• 3. March 16, 1991: Not Just Another Saturday in South Central


• 4. People v. Du: The Trial


• 5. Judge Joyce Karlin: "I Would Dream of Closing Arguments "


• 6. The People v. Du: Sentencing


• 7. Whose Fire This Time?


• Epilogue: Justice?