Zoot Suit Riots

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• The “Zoot Suit Riots” begin between military personnel and Mexican-American youths in East Los Angeles. Although there are many Hispanics in the military, tensions between white servicemen unused to large numbers of Latinos has been rising for months, as has derision of the zoot suits that have become popular with several minority groups. The high-waisted, wide-legged, tight-cuffed, pegged trousers, and a long coat with wide lapels and wide padded shoulders are considered threatening by many whites, who say it also demonstrates an insolent attitude while being wasteful of fabric during wartime.

 

- The trigger is when a group of a dozen sailors begin harassing a small group of Mexican-American women on Main Street. Several Latino teens intervene to help the women and a brawl results in one sailor having his jaw broken. Over the next few days gangs of servicemen numbering into the thousands will go into Latino communities and assault any Latino males encountered. They are often stripped of their suits, beaten and humiliated.

 

Servicemen on the streets of Los Angeles

 

Hispanics partially stripped and beaten during the riots

 

- One witness records:

 

“Marching through the streets of downtown Los Angeles, a mob of several thousand soldiers, sailors, and civilians, proceeded to beat up every zoot suiter they could find. Pushing its way into the important motion picture theaters, the mob ordered the management to turn on the house lights and then ran up and down the aisles dragging Mexicans out of their seats. Streetcars were halted while Mexicans, and some Filipinos and Negroes, were jerked from their seats, pushed into the streets and beaten with a sadistic frenzy.”

 

- Los Angeles Police accompany the servicemen but have orders to not interfere with them. They do arrest hundreds of young Latinos on charges ranging from vagrancy to rioting.

 

Zoot suit wearers under arrest

 

- The press is fully on board with the authorities depicting the Hispanics as dangerous hoodlums, while ignoring reports of white gang members who take advantage of the riots to muscle in on Latino areas.

 

- The Los Angeles City Council criminalizes the wearing of zoot suits but the mayor declines to sign it into law. Ultimately, the military places East LA off limits to servicemen. By the middle of June the riots in Los Angeles will be dying out but disturbances have spread throughout California and to cities in Texas and Arizona while incidents break out in other cities such as Detroit, New York and Philadelphia, where two members of Gene Krupa’s jazz band are beaten up for wearing the band’s zoot suit stage costumes.

 

- First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt will write in her newspaper column,

 

“The question goes deeper than just suits. It is a racial protest. I have been worried for a long time about the Mexican racial situation. It is a problem with roots going a long way back, and we do not always face these problems as we should.”

 

- The Los Angeles Times will respond with an editorial accusing Mrs Roosevelt of having communist leanings and “stirring race discord”."