Collection consists of materials related to Dr. Gibbs' study, The impact of the police beating of Rodney King on the attitudes and behaviors of African American youth in South Central Los Angeles, which she conducted from September 1993 to September 1994. The study included two groups of participants--a group of sixty-seven racially and ethnically diverse civic, political and professional community leaders and focus groups of African American youth ranging in age from 15 through 25. The adult leaders were not chosen at random, but through a snowball sample based on their reputations in the community. The youth groups were recruited via community and youth-serving non-profit, schools, and churches in South Central Los Angeles. The bulk of the material consists of the sixty-seven interviews and seventeen focus groups conducted by Dr. Gibbs and her research assistant. These interviews span ninety-one audiocassettes; forty-four of the eighty-four of these interviews/focus groups are transcribed. The interviews with community leaders comprise the majority of transcribed interviews; due to high levels of noise and overlapping voices, only a few of the focus group interviews were transcribed. Permissions were obtained for only forty of the interviews; the remaining audio interviews and transcripts are restricted. The transcripts contain the original notes, highlights and coding annotations of Dr. Gibbs and her research assistants. Four audiocassettes contain interviews conducted in 1996 and 1997; there are no transcripts of these interviews. One audiocassette contains a recording of a Community Police Forum held in South Central Los Angeles in 1994. The remainder of the materials includes Dr. Gibbs' research protocol, biography, curriculum vitae, supplementary research materials and selected publications relating to her 1993-1994 study.
