Using documentary footage from that October day in 1995, The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story did a decent job depicting the scene in the streets of America when the O.J. Simpson verdict aired. But the show—focused on the intimate drama of the key players involved—didn’t quite capture the enormity of the moment or why it’s something our nation will probably never see again.
Record Numbers
Despite the fact that the event took place at 10:00 AM PST on a Tuesday, a record number of people tuned in to see the jury’s decision. Adults abandoned their work and students left their classrooms as 150 million viewers—57% of the country—gathered around TV screens. By comparison, only 37.8 million tuned in for Barack Obama’s historic inauguration in 2009 (also midday on a Tuesday) and 114.4 million watched the highest-rated sporting event in U.S. history: the 2015 Super Bowl. But if the verdict were to be announced today, most American workers and students wouldn’t gather together around a TV or a huge screen in Times Square. Most would be hunched over personal devices checking Twitter or Facebook or watching some kind of streaming video for the latest update. That’s how most of America watched the rescue of the Chilean miners in 2010.
The World Pressed Pause
While the number of people watching back in October 1995 is staggering, it’s far from the most astonishing statistic from the day. In his 2004 book America on Trial, O.J. Simpson legal adviser Alan Dershowitz outlined how all across the country people froze to watch the verdict. AT&T reported that phone usage dropped by 60% and electric consumption surged as Americans turned on their televisions. According to Dershowitz, water usage decreased because people skipped the bathroom rather than miss the verdict. Supreme Court justices—in session at the time—arranged to have notes with news of the verdict passed to them. Trading volume on the New York Stock Exchange dropped 41%, a meeting between the secretary of state and the director of the CIA was postponed, and President Bill Clinton left the Oval Office to watch the verdict with his staff.
Work halted in factories, post offices, and hospitals. Dershowitz writes that it was “the most unproductive half hour in U.S. business history, costing $480 million in lost output.” And in Israel, Dershowitz claims, even Jewish people unplugging their electronic to honor the holy day of Yom Kippur, turned on their TVs to watch. The global reaction wasn’t very flattering to the U.S. judicial system, but people were watching.
A Brief Show of Unity
More recent events that have brought people into the streets—the death of Osama bin Laden in 2011 or the election of Barack Obama in 2008—were reactions to missions already accomplished. People read about bin Laden on Twitter or watched the 2008 election results in their houses and only once the events were decided did the streets fill with celebration. (And there were plenty of people on both occasions who were in no mood to celebrate.) But for a few brief minutes in 1995, America was a nation publicly united in anticipation. A 1995 report by Roger Rosenblatt in Time magazine captures the scene: “At least there was one moment of visible black-and-white unity last week. It occurred on Tuesday, shortly after 10 a.m. Pacific time, when crowds of citizens, gathered together in the streets like extras in a War of the Worlds movie of the 1950s, stood staring up at outdoor television screens, waiting for the word. They were united, briefly, in an anxious silence of the heart. ”
Archive footage of Americans reacting—some of which made it into American Crime Story—shows how quickly that unity became a sharp division. Though there were certainly exceptions, for the most part that verdict divided the nation along racial lines. The black community saw Simpson’s acquittal as a victory over a corrupt L.A.P.D. The white community saw a man who was too famous to face justice. And both saw the issue of domestic violence put on the back burner. Rosenblatt wrote, “As soon as the verdict was read, they split apart; they could watch themselves do it on the split screens. On one side jubilation, on the other dismay. Afterward it was said that America should have seen this coming, that the division of the races cut so deep, it ought to have been obvious that two nations had always been hiding in one.”
American Crime Story star Courtney B. Vance’s account of watching the verdict reflects how that division kicked off a national conversation. “[Scandal star] Tony [Goldwyn] and I were in his apartment watching the verdict and it came down and I screamed ‘Yes!’ and he screamed ‘No!‘” Vance told E! News. “We looked at each other in horror and started talking about where we both were and why we felt that way.”
The Celebrity Angle
Vance and Goldwyn weren’t the only Hollywood players wrapped up in the verdict. This case was always dogged by celebrity and, as American Crime Story depicted, Oprah Winfrey did tape her audience watching the verdict. Winfrey took the news with a poker face, but the studio audience was split along those predictable racial lines: half despair, half jubilation. But famous faces across the nation were watching and reacting. Kris and Caitlyn (then known as Bruce) Jenner were in the court house that Tuesday. Time reports that Caitlyn was watching the verdict on a monitor upstairs “muttering, ‘You got away with murder, you got away with murder’ over and over.” The Jenner/Kardashian clan would go on to be at the forefront of a reality TV boom that has changed the way the nation sees celebrities. Stars like O.J. Simpson would no longer live on such lofty pedestals when everywhere you look now celebrities are showing off their feet of clay.
A Nation Isolated
With the increase of online communication it’s hard to imagine that the average American in 2015 would be so innocent about how the person standing next to them in the street would react to the news of O.J. Simpson’s release. Footage from the day reveals white bystanders in shock at the black people celebrating around them. Our eyes are much more open now to the roiling racial unrest in America. But that increased awareness comes hand-in-hand with the isolation brought about by the digital age. It’s so unlikely that we will ever again abandon our classroom and office desks and stand together in conference rooms, auditoriums, and the streets looking up at a screen to discover the state of the nation. The verdict, now, would be filtered through ironic hashtags, clever memes, and be joked into oblivion before anyone could turn to their neighbor and ask them in all seriousness, “What just happened?”
