by Dr. Boyce Watkins

I remember 20 years ago, waking up from taking a nap.  I was dating a really horrible woman at the time who shall remain nameless.  But then again, I probably think she’s horrible because she dumped me for a better-looking man, so just chalk it up to my being a hater.  But anyway, the woman in the previous sentence said “Hey Coco (that was my nickname when I was young), look at this.”

I woke up and looked at the television to see this really slow, awkward police chase, where a white Bronco was driving down the freeway with about 20 police cars right behind it.  I then saw that one of the occupants of that vehicle happened to be the “great” OJ Simpson.  I’d thought about Simpson only two days earlier when I was checking out of a hotel and happened to see a news segment announcing that his wife and her friend had been found murdered.

The television headline I saw in the hotel that day was one of those things that you expect to ignore, since dead people are in the news all the time.  But I remember doing a double take on that one, thinking, “Wait.  That could be a bigger story than most.”  Little did I know that it was going to lead to what some considered to be the most closely-watched trial of the 20th century.

READ MORE via BOSS Sports | Dr Boyce Watkins: What the OJ Trial taught me about white people, black people and America.

James