RIOT AFTERMATH: GETTING BACK TO BUSINESS : Anger Resonates Over Continent : King protests: Reaction to the verdict erupts in the nation’s capital. Demonstrations spread to New York, Atlanta and Toronto.

Demonstrators blocked traffic on one of the main bridges into Washington, D.C., for about two hours Monday as protests belatedly sprouted over the verdicts in the Rodney G. King beating case. Several hundred people also demonstrated outside the White House and Justice Department, and thousands of District of Columbia employees stayed home from work.

In Toronto, Canada, an anti-racism protest over the King verdict and a black Canadian’s death at the hands of police erupted into a clash at City Hall and a spate of window-smashing and looting in downtown Toronto. Police there said an undetermined number of people were injured and at least 25 arrests were made on Yonge Street, where rioting broke out after counter-protesters taunted a group that had demonstrated peacefully at the U.S. Consulate.

Other demonstrations took place in New York and Atlanta.

In Washington, police said that about 200 people sat down across the Washington approach to the 14th Street bridge over the Potomac River. The bridge carries thousands of cars daily between Washington and the Virginia suburbs, and the demonstration prolonged the trip home for many Virginia-bound drivers.

It ended after participants met with Mayor Sharon Pratt Kelly, who wore a black arm band to protest the verdicts.

Kelly, who came to the protest site to talk with the group, was booed at first when she tried to emphasize that the verdicts did not occur in Washington.

Kelly had proclaimed Monday a day of orderly demonstration, and an estimated 14,000 district employees took advantage of a “liberal leave policy” to take a day’s paid vacation and show displeasure with the outcome of the police beating case.

The protests at the Justice Department and White House also ended peacefully after speakers decried the outcome of the Los Angeles case and expressed sympathy with the anger evident in the rioting that followed the announcement last week that none of the four Los Angeles police defendants had been convicted.

In Canada, perhaps 400 people--both black and white, and most of them young--joined in the march of destruction down Toronto’s main north-south artery. They broke hundreds of windows, attacked bystanders and took merchandise from stores, including at least one gun shop, police said. At least one vehicle reportedly was set afire.

The rally Monday, organized by the Black Action Defense Committee, began with a demonstration at the U.S. Consulate, where protesters carried signs reading: “White judge, white jury, white justice, from Toronto to L.A.,” and called for the resignation of Toronto Police Chief William McCormack.

“The evil is not limited to the United States,” black leader Akua Benjamin told the crowd. “It’s right here. The only thing that’s missing is we don’t have a video.”

The anger was fueled by the death early Saturday of Raymond Lawrence, 22, who was was slain by a white undercover officer.

The crowd then set off through central Toronto. A scuffle broke out at one point, when white pickets appeared. They carried two signs, reading, “L.A. burns, Toronto next?” and “We denounce racist murder of whites.”

In New York, police and student demonstrators protesting the verdicts clashed on a Manhattan campus. At least 11 people were arrested and eight officers were injured in the disturbance, police said.

About 50 police officers in riot gear moved in to disperse about 200 black demonstrators during the rally at Manhattan Community College.

Police said the crowd was blocking the entrance to the college in lower Manhattan. Scuffles and fistfights broke out as police moved in, and at least eight officers suffered minor injuries. An unknown number of students were also believed to have been hurt, a police spokesman said.

College students in Atlanta began taking exams Monday, despite calls for a boycott that followed violent demonstrations in that city over the King verdicts.

Police said their presence near the six-college Atlanta University Center was being returned to the usual level.

Petitions circulated around the center’s campuses called for a boycott of final exams to protest “unending oppression that we have and continue to experience at the hands of this government.”

But officials at Clark Atlanta University, Morris Brown College and Spelman College, three of the center’s colleges, said there were no reports of absent students.

Meanwhile, Mayor Maynard Jackson called for an apology and restitution to Korean business owners whose shops were looted during the violence in Atlanta.

Other Riots In U.S. History

Here is a look at some of the bloodiest riots in U.S. history:

PLACE: New York City

DATE: July, 1863

TOLL: 1,000 dead

CAUSE: Irish laborers, unable to afford substitutes to soldier for them, fought conscription in Civil War

PLACE: Vicksburg, Miss.

DATE: Dec. 7, 1874

TOLL: 70 dead

CAUSE: Racial tension

PLACE: New York City

DATE: July 12, 1871

TOLL: 52 dead

CAUSE: Fighting between Irish Catholics and Protestants

PLACE: East St. Louis, Ill.

DATE: July, 1917

TOLL: 49 dead

CAUSE: Racial tension

PLACE: Memphis, Tenn.

DATE: April 30, 1866

TOLL: 48 dead

CAUSE: Sparked by attempts to arrest black soldiers during a celebration of their regiment’s discharge from Civil War duty

PLACE: Attica, N.Y.

DATE: Sept. 9, 1971

TOLL: 43 dead

CAUSE: Prison uprising

PLACE: Detroit, Mich.

DATE: July 23, 1967

TOLL: 43 dead

CAUSE: Racial tension

PLACE: Tulsa, Okla.

DATE: May, 1921

TOLL: 36 dead

CAUSE: Racial tension

PLACE: Watts, L.A.

DATE: Aug. 11, 1965

TOLL: 35 dead

CAUSE: Arrest of black motorist by CHP officers

PLACE: Detroit, Mich.

DATE: June 20, 1943

TOLL: 34 dead

CAUSE: Racial tension

Sources: “Encyclopedia of American Facts and Dates,” “The World Book,” “Encyclopedia of Black America,” “World Almanac, 1992” and “The Negro Almanac: A Reference Work on the African American.”

Compiled by Michael Meyers and Larry Harnisch