Zoot Suit Riots

The Zoot Suit Riots were a series of riots that erupted in Los Angeles, California during World War II, between sailors and Marines stationed throughout the city and Latino youths, who were recognizable by the zoot suits they favored. While Mexican Americans were the primary targets of military servicemen, African American and Filipino/Filipino American youth were also targeted. [ [http://www.oovrag.com/essays/essay2003a-1.shtml "With Style: Filipino Americans and the Making of American Urban Culture"] ]

History

The riots began in Los Angeles, amidst a period of rising tensions between American servicemen stationed in southern California and Los Angeles' Chicano community. On May 31, 1943, a group of white sailors on leave clashed with a group of young Hispanics in the downtown area. One sailor, Joe Dacy Coleman, was stabbed in the melee. The violence escalated as sailors and Marines continued to clash with Mexican-American youth; specifically targeting young men dressed in Zoot Suits and calling themselves pachucos (a precursor to the term Chicano). The Los Angeles Police Department initially refused to intervene as newspapers, headed by various Hearst Publishing dailies, placed the blame entirely on the pachucos. As the violence escalated over the ensuing days, thousands of servicemen joined the attacks.

An eyewitness to the attacks, journalist Carey McWilliams, described the scene as follows:

Marching through the streets of downtown Los Angeles, a mob of severalthousand soldiers, sailors, and civilians, proceeded to beat up every zoot suiterthey could find. Pushing its way into the important motion picture theaters,the mob ordered the management to turn on the house lights and then ranup and down the aisles dragging Mexicans out of their seats. Streetcars werehalted while Mexicans, and some Filipinos and Negroes, were jerked fromtheir seats, pushed into the streets and beaten with a sadistic frenzy [Carey McWilliams. North From Mexico. Quoted in Richard Griswold del Castillo. The Los Angeles "Zoot Suit Riots" Revisited: "Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos", Vol. 16, No. 2 (Summer, 2000), pp. 367-391.]

The local press lauded the attacks by the servicemen, describing the assaults as having a "cleansing effect" that were ridding Los Angeles of "miscreants" and "hoodlums." [Carey McWilliams. "Blood on the Pavements." In: "Fool's Paradise: A Carey McWilliams Reader". Heyday Books, 2001. ISBN-13: 9781890771416] Sailors and Marines initially targeted pachucos, but African-Americans in Zoot Suits were also victimized in the Central Avenue corridor area. This escalation compelled the Navy and Marine Corp command staff to intervene on June 7; confining sailors and Marines to barracks and declaring Los Angeles as off-limits to all military personnel with enforcement by U.S. Navy Shore Patrol.

A week later, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt characterized the riots, which the local press had largely attributed to criminal actions by the Mexican American community, as in fact being "race riots" rooted in long-term discrimination against Mexican-Americans. This led to an outraged response by the "Los Angeles Times", which in an editorial the following day accused Mrs. Roosevelt of stirring "race discord." [Eduardo Obregón Pagán. "Murder at the Sleepy Lagoon: Zoot Suits, Race, and Riot in Wartime L.A." Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 2004.]

The riots in popular culture

*The riots are referenced in Steven Spielberg's 1979 film "1941".
*The riots were the inspiration for a play written by Luis Valdez — "Zoot Suit", which itself inspired the 1981 filmed version.
*A murder mystery novel, "The Zoot Suit Murders" by Thomas Sanchez, employs the riots as a backdrop to the main mystery.
*A swing album called "Zoot Suit Riot", featuring a song of the same name, was released by the American band Cherry Poppin' Daddies in 1997.
*Mention of the riots appear in the song "People of the Sun", 1996, by Rage Against the Machine.
* The 1992 film, "American Me", alludes to the fact that the lead character, Santana (played by Edward James Olmos), was conceived when his mother was raped by sailors during the Zoot Suit Riots.
* In "The Black Dahlia" by James Ellroy, the main characters are cops involved in the riot. The movie version of the novel opens with a depiction of the riot.
*The riots are referenced in Thomas Pynchon's landmark postmodern novel "Gravity's Rainbow".
*"Fireworks", an underground film by Kenneth Anger, depicts a dream inspired by the zoot suit riots, as reported by the author as an audio commentary to the 2007 DVD release.
*The song "Hey, Pachuco" by the jump swing band Royal Crown Revue is about the Zoot Suit Riots.

References

Further reading

*Del Castillo, Richard Griswold “The Los Angeles “Zoot Suit Riots” revisited: Mexican and Latin American Perspectives”. Mexican Studies / Estudios Mexicanos, Vol. 16, No. 2 (Summer, 2000), pp. 367-391
*Mazon, Maurizio. The Zoot-Suit Riots: The Psychology of Symbolic Annihilation. University of Texas Press, Austin, TX. 2002
*Pagan, Eduardo O. “Los Angeles Geopolitics and the Zoot Suit Riot, 1943” Social Science History, Vol. 24, No. 1 (Spring, 2000), 223-256
*Pagán, Eduardo Obregón. "Murder at the Sleepy Lagoon: Zoot Suits, Race & Riots in Wartime L.A." Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 2003. ISBN 0-8078-5494-8
*"Zoot Suit Riots". Produced by Joseph Tovares. WGBH Boston, 2001. 60 mins. (PBS Video, 1320 Braddock Place, Alexandria, VA 22314-1698; 1-800-344-3337

External links

* [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/zoot/ Zoot Suit Riots.] "American Experience".
* [http://web.mala.bc.ca/davies/H324War/Zootsuit.riots.media.1943.htm A list of newspaper articles] written about the Zoot Suit Riots.
* [http://www.calisphere.universityofcalifornia.edu/browse/keyword/%22Zoot+Suit+Riots%22 Images and primary source documents about the Zoot Suit Riots] , from the University of California