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The verdict, when it finally came, left most whites bewildered and angry, many blacks jubilant. As the nation regarded itself on this split screen, it became apparent that the truths we hold to be self-evident are perhaps evident only to some: justice has a different meaning for the minority motorist pulled over for speeding or for no reason at all. Cochran skillfully managed to make O.J. Simpson, with his white wife and his country-club friends, the unlikely symbol of this ugly racial truth--and so exploited the media frenzy of a celebrity case to deliver a message too often ignored by white America. Never mind that many Americans, white and black, thought it was the right message, wrong trial.
Two weeks after the verdict, Americans had a chance to hear that message again when hundreds of thousands of black men marched in Washington in a day of atonement and an assertion of pride. Cochran did not attend, but he was there in spirit, one of the reasons, along with the chimera of a Colin Powell presidency, that many participants had the optimism to march at all.
--By Elizabeth Gleick