Speaker 1: Happy Saturday. Today is the eightieth anniversary of the start
Speaker 1: of a multi day outbreak of violence in Los Angeles
Speaker 1: that came to be known as the zoot Suit Riots.
Speaker 1: Our episode on the zoot Suit Riots came out on
Speaker 1: August thirteenth, twenty eighteen, even though I had been planning
Speaker 1: for months to do it in connection to the seventy
Speaker 1: fifth anniversary, which took place that year. I had my
Speaker 1: act together this time around, though, And this is Today's
Speaker 1: Saturday Classic Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class,
Speaker 1: a production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Frye. For the
Speaker 1: last I don't even know how many months I've had
Speaker 1: this note on my podcast shortlist that had in all
Speaker 1: capital letters the word June followed by Zootsuit Riots. You
Speaker 1: may notice it is not June right now. It's a
Speaker 1: little after June. It's fine, yeah, I mean, unless you're
Speaker 1: listening to podcasts much later than they come out, and
Speaker 1: in somehow June of twenty nineteen, So we're recording this
Speaker 1: in July. It'll be August before it comes out. I
Speaker 1: one hundred percent dropped that ball on this thing that
Speaker 1: I had a note to myself to do for months
Speaker 1: and months. But because the zoot Suit riots happened seventy
Speaker 1: five years ago this past June, and because we got
Speaker 1: a bunch of listener requests for it, and because I
Speaker 1: answered a lot of those requests by saying that I
Speaker 1: was doing it in June of twenty eighteen, I'm going
Speaker 1: to do it now, a couple of months late. As
Speaker 1: is often the case when we talk about riots on
Speaker 1: the show, the name of this one is really a misnomer.
Speaker 1: It didn't have a lot of the traits that people
Speaker 1: think of when you say riot. There was not really
Speaker 1: much property damage. It was more about attacking people. And
Speaker 1: it also wasn't really about the zoot suits, although zoot
Speaker 1: suits had come to symbolize a lot in Los Angeles
Speaker 1: and in other parts of the United States when this happened.
Speaker 1: So today we're going to talk about some context of
Speaker 1: the Mexican community in Los Angeles and the nineteen forties,
Speaker 1: as well as a murder that became a major precursor
Speaker 1: to this mass violence, and then we will talk about
Speaker 1: the violence itself. Okay, So to start it off, we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about Spain actively colonizing what's now California
Speaker 1: starting in the late seventeenth century, and the region was
Speaker 1: under Spanish control until the end of the Mexican War
Speaker 1: of Independence in eighteen twenty one, at which point it
Speaker 1: became a part of Mexico. After the Mexican American War
Speaker 1: ended in eighteen forty eight, Mexico seeded a huge swath
Speaker 1: of land in the southwest to the United States, including
Speaker 1: what would become California. California became the thirty first state
Speaker 1: on September ninth, eighteen fifty We talk more about the
Speaker 1: history of immigration between Mexico and the United States in
Speaker 1: our twenty sixteen episode on the Brazil Programs, so we're
Speaker 1: not going to walk through all of that again today,
Speaker 1: but the border between these two nations wasn't particularly regulated
Speaker 1: until the nineteen teens. There were several waves of immigration
Speaker 1: from Mexico to the United States, including refugees fleeing the
Speaker 1: Mexican Revolution, which started in nineteen ten. So by the
Speaker 1: nineteen forties, when the Zootsuit Riots took place, the Mexican
Speaker 1: community in the southwestern United States included immigrants as well
Speaker 1: as people of Mexican ancestry whose families had been there
Speaker 1: since way before the state of California even existed. In
Speaker 1: Los Angeles and other cities, the Mexican population overwhelmingly lived
Speaker 1: in tight knit communities known as barrios, from the Spanish
Speaker 1: word for neighborhood, and these neighborhoods evolved through a range
Speaker 1: of social and economic conditions, as well as discriminatory housing
Speaker 1: policies and employment and lending practices. Basically the same policies
Speaker 1: that enforced segregation of black residents in other parts of
Speaker 1: the country enforced segregation of Mexican and other Hispanic and
Speaker 1: Latino residents in the American Southwest. The barrios in Los
Speaker 1: Angeles included really densely populated urban neighborhoods, as well as
Speaker 1: Chavez Ravine, which had been home to a predominantly Mexican
Speaker 1: population going back into the middle of the eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 1: Because of its steep terrain, parts of the Chavez Ravine
Speaker 1: were almost rural. Poverty was widespread in these neighborhoods. The
Speaker 1: housing was frequently substandard and overcrowded, and often managed by
Speaker 1: predatory landlords. While the Anglo community tended to view the
Speaker 1: barrios as slums or eyes sores. The people who were
Speaker 1: actually living there had extremely tight knit relationships with one another.
Speaker 1: There was a simultaneous mix of intense neighborhood and cultural
Speaker 1: pride and social and economic isolation from the rest of
Speaker 1: the city. That wasn't necessarily the case for the young
Speaker 1: people living in the barrios, though. In the nineteen forties,
Speaker 1: young people in the barrios were dominantly the children of
Speaker 1: Mexican immigrants who had been born in the United States
Speaker 1: and were citizens, and many of them felt like outsiders
Speaker 1: both within and outside of their neighborhoods. They were being
Speaker 1: educated in English speaking American schools, and a lot of
Speaker 1: them wanted to experience life outside the barrio, or even
Speaker 1: leave the barrio. This really put them at odds with
Speaker 1: their parents, who tended to be traditional and conservative. These
Speaker 1: second generation Mexican Americans were also subject to huge pressure
Speaker 1: to assimilate with Anglo life from outside the barrio, and
Speaker 1: huge pressure to maintain a strong sense of Mexican cultural
Speaker 1: identity from within it and outside of their neighborhoods. They
Speaker 1: faced discrimination because of their ethnicity and sometimes outright exclusion
Speaker 1: from the types of activities that would otherwise be completely
Speaker 1: typical for a teenager. Economic hardship, social isolation, exclusion from
Speaker 1: recreation and social activities, and a sense of being an
Speaker 1: outsider are all factors that are cited as reasons why
Speaker 1: young people join gangs, and this happened in California in
Speaker 1: the nineteen thirties and forties as well. Although we should
Speaker 1: make it really clear that a lot of the gangs
Speaker 1: in question were more like tight knit neighborhood clicks than
Speaker 1: criminal organizations. Rivalries between young people from different barrios could
Speaker 1: become really intense, though. I mean, there was definitely crime,
Speaker 1: and there definitely were criminal organizations, but overwhelmingly crimes were
Speaker 1: being committed by adults, not by adolescents. And the panic
Speaker 1: that we're about to talk about was about this nefarious
Speaker 1: specter of violent criminal teens and that that was really
Speaker 1: not what was going on. As Tracy just alluded to.
Speaker 1: In the media, these Mexican American youth were portrayed as
Speaker 1: violent and incorrigible delinquents. This became even more true in
Speaker 1: August of nineteen forty two, following a murder at a
Speaker 1: reservoir known as Sleepy Lagoon. Mexican youth used Sleepy Lagoon
Speaker 1: as a swimtle because they weren't allowed to use the
Speaker 1: public swimming pools, and on August first, nineteen forty two,
Speaker 1: a fight broke out after a party near the reservoir
Speaker 1: and twenty two year old Jose Diaz was beaten and
Speaker 1: left for dead. Diaz had recently enlisted in the US
Speaker 1: Army and it was his last weekend before he was
Speaker 1: scheduled to leave. He died not long after reaching the hospital.
Speaker 1: In response to this murder, law enforcement rounded up roughly
Speaker 1: six hundred people in a citywide dragnet. Most of them
Speaker 1: were Mexican American and most of them were teenagers. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: twenty two teens and young men from the thirty eighth
Speaker 1: Street neighborhood were arrested on murder charges, and seventeen of
Speaker 1: them were indicted. They were between the ages of fourteen
Speaker 1: and twenty two, and they were tried in the largest
Speaker 1: mass trial in California history. This trial was a huge
Speaker 1: miscarriage of justice. The judge, Charles Williams Fricky, was known
Speaker 1: as sam Quentin Fricky because of how often he sentenced
Speaker 1: people to prison there and during the trial he consistently
Speaker 1: sided with the prosecution. The prosecution was making the case
Speaker 1: that the defendants were a violent street gang, and to
Speaker 1: that end, the judge refused to allow them to get
Speaker 1: clean clothes or have their hair cut because their clothing,
Speaker 1: their hair, and their disheveled appearance was evidence of their
Speaker 1: gang status. We're going to get more into clothing in
Speaker 1: a bit, but just know they basically kept them in
Speaker 1: a state that would keep the public mindset completely confirmed
Speaker 1: that they were everything horrible. These people were saying, yeah,
Speaker 1: even if when they originally were arrested they had been
Speaker 1: wearing neatly attired clothing, they were in these same clothes
Speaker 1: for the length of these proceedings, so they just became
Speaker 1: more and more disheveled. The defense also had seventeen different
Speaker 1: defendants to deal with, and the judge continually ruled that
Speaker 1: their attempts to confer with their clients were disruptive. The
Speaker 1: defense fendants were ultimately seated in two rows facing the jury,
Speaker 1: physically separated from their attorneys. Some of the defendants also
Speaker 1: really did not take this trial seriously. Some of them
Speaker 1: had never even met the victim and seemed to just
Speaker 1: assume that they were definitely going to be acquitted because
Speaker 1: clearly they were not involved. That meant that an all
Speaker 1: white jury was constantly face to face with a bunch
Speaker 1: of teenagers, some of whom were chatting with each other
Speaker 1: and rolling their eyes and generally acting like teenagers who
Speaker 1: weren't really being supervised in the courtroom. The trial lasted
Speaker 1: until January of nineteen forty three. In the end, five
Speaker 1: of the defendants were acquitted. The rest were found guilty
Speaker 1: of a number of crimes and sentenced to between six
Speaker 1: months and life in prison, depending on the charge. During
Speaker 1: these proceedings, girls and young women from the thirty eighth
Speaker 1: Street neighborhood had also been called to testify and to
Speaker 1: participate in the investigation, but they refused to cooperate. Afterward,
Speaker 1: they were taken from their parents' custody, made wards the state,
Speaker 1: and placed in a reform school called Ventura School for Girls,
Speaker 1: and they remained there until they were legally adults. This
Speaker 1: trial and the news reporting that surrounded it, continued to
Speaker 1: inflame tensions between the Mexican and Anglo communities in Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: News reports described the kids from the thirty eighth Street
Speaker 1: gang as a violent gang, and the whole incident was
Speaker 1: used as evidence that Mexican youth were inherently criminal and dangerous.
Speaker 1: Mexican youth gangs were blamed for all kinds of crime
Speaker 1: and social ills. The idea of a dangerous Mexican criminal
Speaker 1: element spread among the Anglo population. Rather than doing anything
Speaker 1: about the social and economic conditions and the barrios, lawmakers
Speaker 1: and media instead used these young people as evidence of
Speaker 1: a nefarious criminal element that needed to be dealt with,
Speaker 1: and Mexican American youth, who already felt like outsiders, felt
Speaker 1: even more targeted by an obviously unfair legal and law
Speaker 1: enforcement system. After two years of advocacy by the Sleepy
Speaker 1: Lagoon Defense Committee, these convictions were overturned on appeal in
Speaker 1: nineteen forty four. Although the charges were never formally cleared.
Speaker 1: The appellate court found a number of problems with that
Speaker 1: original trial, from inadmissible evidence being admitted, to inadequate defense
Speaker 1: representation to the judge's treatment of the most vocal of
Speaker 1: the defense attorneys. Today, the murder of Jose Dias is
Speaker 1: still officially unsolved. Most of the young men who had
Speaker 1: been convicted of his murder were still in prison when
Speaker 1: the zoot Suit riots happened. Were going to get into
Speaker 1: the riots, and before that into the zoot suits after
Speaker 1: a sponsor break. The Zootsuit Riots were named for a
Speaker 1: style of clothing that was popular among the Mexican American
Speaker 1: youth in Los Angeles in the nineteen thirties and forties.
Speaker 1: The etymology of zoot suit is a little unclear. You'll
Speaker 1: see a lot of different places of like this is
Speaker 1: the where the term zootsuit comes from, and they all
Speaker 1: kind of contradict each other. It's also unclear exactly who
Speaker 1: made the first one. But these suits grew out of
Speaker 1: jazz culture in African American communities. In other parts of
Speaker 1: the United States, they were really popular among swing dancers
Speaker 1: because the cut and the volume of the fabric really
Speaker 1: accentuated the dancing. Zootsuits became popular among minority communities all
Speaker 1: across the United States. Whichever minority community was living in
Speaker 1: a particular place was probably also wearing zoot suits. Even
Speaker 1: though we are talking about Mexican Americans in this episode,
Speaker 1: these suits were culturally very important in these other communities.
Speaker 1: They are part of a lot of literature and essays
Speaker 1: from the nineteen thirties and forties, especially by Hispanic and
Speaker 1: Black writers. Among Mexican Americans, zoot suits were one part
Speaker 1: of a counterculture movement known as Pachuco. Patuco incorporated zootsuits
Speaker 1: along with music and dance and an inventive slang called calo,
Speaker 1: which combined Spanish, English, and jazz inspired words, as well
Speaker 1: as words from other influences. Zootsuits were the most recognizable
Speaker 1: hallmark of the Pachuco man. These are suits with high
Speaker 1: waisted pants, suspenders, and very wide legs that then are
Speaker 1: pegged at the ankle. The corresponding coats are very long
Speaker 1: and have exaggerated broad shoulders. Men usually wore them with
Speaker 1: a coordinating pork pie hat and a distinctive watch chain.
Speaker 1: Some Pachucas are women in this culture, wore full zootsuits
Speaker 1: with the pants. Others paired them with short skirts, big hair,
Speaker 1: and bright makeup, regardless of which she was doing, though,
Speaker 1: women who dressed this way were really pushing gender norms.
Speaker 1: Wearing the pants was thought of as too masculine, but
Speaker 1: the short skirts and the loud makeup were regarded as
Speaker 1: too aggressively feminine and to two sexual to both Anglos
Speaker 1: and the Mexican parents of these youths. Pachuco wasn't a culture.
Speaker 1: It was just another word for punk or thug. Mexican
Speaker 1: parents worried that their children were going to quote become Pachuco's,
Speaker 1: and among Anglos, part of the response to this culture
Speaker 1: might be summed up as how dare you zoot? Suits
Speaker 1: were expensive, and news reporting about the style tended to
Speaker 1: hype up the cost. Pachucos took great care in their appearance.
Speaker 1: They walked with a swagger, and they took pride in
Speaker 1: being able to dance and going out and having a
Speaker 1: good time. So from Anglos there was this whole element
Speaker 1: of how dare you spend so much on a suit
Speaker 1: when you should be living in poverty? How dare you
Speaker 1: walk with that swagger when you live in a slum.
Speaker 1: Caesar Shavez, who co founded the National farm Workers' Association
Speaker 1: with the lur Shuerta, described it this way. Quote we
Speaker 1: were a minority group of a minority group, so in
Speaker 1: a way we were challenging cops by being with two
Speaker 1: or three friends and dressing sharp. But in those days,
Speaker 1: I was prepared for any sacrifice to be able to
Speaker 1: dress the way I wanted to dress. I thought it
Speaker 1: looked sharp and neat and it was the style. And
Speaker 1: to circle back around to the Sleepy Lagoon murder case,
Speaker 1: the defendants were part of a culture that valued dressing
Speaker 1: well and taking care of their clothing in appearance. But again,
Speaker 1: if you recall, they were forced to wear the same
Speaker 1: increasingly shabby clothes for the duration of their trial. So
Speaker 1: for Patucco's this one outfit, the zoot suit had a
Speaker 1: whole lot of adolescent rebelliousness and community pride and Mexican
Speaker 1: American culture all rolled up into it, and in the
Speaker 1: nineteen forties, wearing one became an overtly political act. In
Speaker 1: another way as well, during World War Two, fabric was
Speaker 1: tightly rationed, and zoot suits used a lot of fabric.
Speaker 1: The Wartime Productions Board limited the use of wool in
Speaker 1: March of nineteen forty two, and it banned a number
Speaker 1: of extra flourishes on clothing that required more fabric, including cuffs, plats,
Speaker 1: pocket flaps, and vests. Zoot Suits were pretty much all
Speaker 1: extra fabric. Having made one, I will wholly endorse this fact.
Speaker 1: They take up a lot of yardage and at first
Speaker 1: tailor's got around this by making zoot suits out of
Speaker 1: other fabrics besides wool, but in October of nineteen forty two,
Speaker 1: the WPB specifically banned those as well. It wasn't illegal
Speaker 1: to wear a zoot suit, but it was illegal to
Speaker 1: make them, although bootleg tailors continued to do it anyway.
Speaker 1: The City of Los Angeles also debated banning the wearing
Speaker 1: of zoot suits that year, but ultimately did not. By
Speaker 1: nineteen forty three, zoot suits were very closely associated with
Speaker 1: crime and with juvenile delinquency. We talked before the break
Speaker 1: about the widespread media coverage of Mexican youth portraying them
Speaker 1: as incorrigible criminals. Tied to that stereotype was the clothing
Speaker 1: that they were wearing. Under present Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Good
Speaker 1: Neighbor Policy, which was meant to improve American relationships with
Speaker 1: Latin America, news outlets in some cities stopped using the
Speaker 1: word Mexican and crime reporting. Instead, they were writing things
Speaker 1: like zoot suited thugs, which everyone read as basically a
Speaker 1: Mexican gangster in a zoot suit. This use of language
Speaker 1: didn't really do anything to shield Mexicans from the perception
Speaker 1: that they were criminals, and it did reinforce the connection
Speaker 1: between zoot suits and crime. On June second, nineteen forty three,
Speaker 1: an article in the La Times called the zoot suit
Speaker 1: quote a uniform of delinquency. Calls to police were common
Speaker 1: just because someone in a zoot suit was inherently suspicious. Simultaneously,
Speaker 1: in the early nineteen forties, there were a lot of
Speaker 1: service members from the US military in Los Angeles. At
Speaker 1: any given time. Some of them were passing through, some
Speaker 1: were preparing to deploy, some were on shore leave, and
Speaker 1: some were training at the Naval and Marine Corps Reserve
Speaker 1: Center in Chavezravine, also known as the Naval Reserve Armory.
Speaker 1: This facility opened in a predominantly Mexican part of the
Speaker 1: city in nineteen forty. Especially on weekends, the number of
Speaker 1: military personnel in Los Angeles could swell to about fifty thousand.
Speaker 1: A lot of these servicemen felt like the zoot suitors
Speaker 1: were deliberately antagonizing them. They were wearing unpatriotic clothing that
Speaker 1: flew in the face of wartime rationing. And on top
Speaker 1: of that was the perception that the zoot suitors were
Speaker 1: also draft dodgers. And while that may have been the
Speaker 1: case for some, a lot of the Mexican youth who
Speaker 1: were part of the Pachuco culture were too young to enlist.
Speaker 1: There were also stories of men wearing their zoot suits
Speaker 1: when they reported in and being turned down for military
Speaker 1: service because of the perception that they would be troublemakers.
Speaker 1: And of course, there were plenty of Mexican Americans serving
Speaker 1: in the armed forces, although numbers were not clear because
Speaker 1: their numbers were not separated out from the white population.
Speaker 1: At the same time, there was also a lot of
Speaker 1: overall anti immigrant sentiment going on, even though most of
Speaker 1: the young people being targeted here were American citizens of
Speaker 1: Mexican descent. What we're talking about today was happening in
Speaker 1: parallel with the signing of Executive Order ninety sixty six
Speaker 1: and the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans from the West
Speaker 1: coast of the United States. Almost two thirds of the
Speaker 1: people who were incarcerated under that executive order were also
Speaker 1: American citizens. Fights between service members and Mexican civilian use
Speaker 1: became increasingly common in late nineteen forty two. In December,
Speaker 1: they were reported at a rate of about one per week.
Speaker 1: By the spring of nineteen forty three, that had increased
Speaker 1: to between two and three fights per day. Each fight
Speaker 1: became justification for the next one, and sometimes they erupted
Speaker 1: into mass violence. It's not totally clear what caused these
Speaker 1: ongoing clashes between service members and civilians of Mexican descent
Speaker 1: to escalate into mass violence. According to a number of sources,
Speaker 1: it was a fight between eleven sailors and a group
Speaker 1: of zoot suitors on May thirtieth, nineteen forty three, which
Speaker 1: left one sailor with a broken jaw. These riots started
Speaker 1: on June third and were at least in theory in
Speaker 1: retaliation for that earlier fight. And we're going to get
Speaker 1: into the details of the zootsuit riots after we first
Speaker 1: pause for a break where we hear from one of
Speaker 1: the sponsors that keeps his show going. On June third,
Speaker 1: nineteen forty three, a group of about fifty sailors left
Speaker 1: the Naval and Marine Corps Reserve Center in Schabzravine. They
Speaker 1: were armed with makeshift weapons, and they made their way
Speaker 1: through the neighborhoods near the armory looking for a fight.
Speaker 1: They specifically looked for and attacked anyone wearing a zoot suit.
Speaker 1: This was the first night of the zoot suit riots.
Speaker 1: June fourth was a Friday, and that evening, sailors began
Speaker 1: hiring cabs to take them into the barrios. They treated
Speaker 1: this like a seek and destroy mission, seeking out and
Speaker 1: beating Mexican youth, especially the ones in zootsuits, but they
Speaker 1: also attacked people who were not in zoot suits. Five
Speaker 1: victims were hospitalized. Most of the sailors had returned to
Speaker 1: base by the time shore patrol and the police arrived,
Speaker 1: and there were only a few arrests, and those were
Speaker 1: mainly Mexican victims. On June fifth, the scene was much
Speaker 1: the same, with the riots spreading further into East Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: The attacks targeted men, especially the ones who quote looked
Speaker 1: like Pachuco's. This included a group of musicians who were
Speaker 1: leaving Aztec Recording Company. On June seventh, news reports spread
Speaker 1: that zoot suitors were planning a coordinated effort to kill police.
Speaker 1: Based on what evidence, we have no idea. It was
Speaker 1: kind of just a rumor as far as we know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we don't know why that was being reported as though
Speaker 1: it was a real thing. That's the question of a
Speaker 1: lot of the reporting that happened with this, and in response,
Speaker 1: thousands of servicemen came to downtown Los Angeles, some of
Speaker 1: them from as far away as San Diego. Cab drivers
Speaker 1: offered the servicemen free rides, and they attacked people not
Speaker 1: only in Mexican neighborhoods, but also in the predominantly black
Speaker 1: neighborhood of Watts. June seventh was really the peak of
Speaker 1: the zootsuit riots, and throughout this sort of war, servicemen
Speaker 1: attacked and beat up young men in zoot suits. They
Speaker 1: were often armed with things like clubs and tire irons.
Speaker 1: In some cases, they stripped their victims down to their
Speaker 1: underwear in the streets and then sometimes set fire to
Speaker 1: their zoot suits in front of them. Sometimes the soldiers
Speaker 1: cut off their target's hair. They also invaded people's homes,
Speaker 1: and they stormed movie theaters to drag Mexican and other
Speaker 1: minority patrons out into the street and attack them. While
Speaker 1: there were definitely cases of Mexicans and other minorities fighting
Speaker 1: back or like taunting the sailors, like being generally aggressive,
Speaker 1: this was not a case of two factions coming together
Speaker 1: and fighting. The servicemen were definitely the instigators here, and
Speaker 1: law enforcement did little to intervene In all of this,
Speaker 1: officers often arrived on the scene after the violence was
Speaker 1: over and then arrested the victims instead of the perpetrators,
Speaker 1: purportedly for their own protection. Servicemen who were picked up
Speaker 1: by law enforcement were typically taken back to base or
Speaker 1: just taken a few blocks away from the violence and
Speaker 1: dropped off and otherwise faced no consequences. There were also
Speaker 1: reports of young Mexican American men turning themselves into police
Speaker 1: stations and asking to be taken into custody rather than
Speaker 1: face being the victims of violence in their own neighborhoods.
Speaker 1: Throughout all of this, news reports generally praised the servicemen
Speaker 1: as carrying out a much needed vigilante war against uncontrollable
Speaker 1: Mexican delinquents. The Los Angeles Times read headlines like zo
Speaker 1: suitors learn lesson in fight with servicemen. Here's how The
Speaker 1: New York Times kicked off its reporting on June seventh,
Speaker 1: quote subdued and no longer ready to do battle. Twenty
Speaker 1: eight zoot suitors stripped of their gears, clothing, and with
Speaker 1: County jail barbers hopefully eyeing their flowing ductail haircuts, languished
Speaker 1: behind bars today after a second night of battle with
Speaker 1: flears and servicemen, and the next paragraph the article acknowledges
Speaker 1: that this was quote a war declared by servicemen. First
Speaker 1: Lady Eleanor Roosevelt wrote about the riots in her mind
Speaker 1: Day column, saying, quote, the question goes deeper than just suits.
Speaker 1: It is a racial protest. I have been worried for
Speaker 1: a long time about the Mexican racial situation. It is
Speaker 1: a problem with roots going along way back, and we
Speaker 1: do not always face these problems as we should. After
Speaker 1: this appeared, the La Times accused her of sowing racial discord.
Speaker 1: On June eighth, the violence largely stopped because the servicemen
Speaker 1: were barred from leaving base, and downtown Los Angeles was
Speaker 1: made out of bounds for soldiers and sailors. At the
Speaker 1: same time, the official Navy position was that all of
Speaker 1: the actions by sailors were in self defense. That was
Speaker 1: patently false. They were picking the fights themselves. The Shore
Speaker 1: Patrol was also given orders to arrest any member of
Speaker 1: the military whose behavior was disorderly. On the ninth, the
Speaker 1: Los Angeles City Council passed a resolution banning the public
Speaker 1: wearing of zoot suits, with fifty days in jail as punishment.
Speaker 1: Although there had been hundreds of injuries, some of them severe,
Speaker 1: There were no deaths during the zoot Suit riots, but
Speaker 1: the racial aspect of the violences off obvious by the numbers.
Speaker 1: In terms of hospitalizations, about one hundred Mexican Americans suffered
Speaker 1: serious injuries compared to roughly sixteen servicemen. There also would
Speaker 1: have been lots and lots of people who were hurt
Speaker 1: but didn't seek medical care. There were also arrests of
Speaker 1: close to one hundred Mexican Americans compared to about twenty
Speaker 1: servicemen and about thirty non Hispanic civilians. After this was over,
Speaker 1: two committees were formed to investigate and find out the
Speaker 1: cause of the riots. One was a Citizens Committee ordered
Speaker 1: by California Governor Earl Warren. The other was an Anti
Speaker 1: American Activities investigation presided over by State Senator Jack B. Tenney,
Speaker 1: which looked for fascist and Nazi instigators. No evidence was
Speaker 1: ever found or published to back up the whole fascist
Speaker 1: slash Nazi angle, but the Citizens Committee report was clear
Speaker 1: quote in undertaking to deal with the cause of these outbreaks,
Speaker 1: the existence of race prejudice can not be ignored In response,
Speaker 1: to this. Los Angeles Mayor Fletcher Boren, on the other hand,
Speaker 1: maintained that race was not a factor and continued to
Speaker 1: blame the riots on the zoot seaters and on juvenile delinquents.
Speaker 1: The Citizens Committee report outlined some of the social conditions
Speaker 1: that had led to all of this quote there are
Speaker 1: approximately two hundred and fifty thousand persons of Mexican descent
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles County. Living conditions among the majority of
Speaker 1: these people are far below the general level of the community.
Speaker 1: Housing is inadequate, Sanitation is bad and is made worse
Speaker 1: by congestion. Recreational facilities for children are very poor, and
Speaker 1: there is insufficient supervision of the playgrounds, swimming pools, and
Speaker 1: other youth centers. Such conditions are breeding places for juvenile delinquency.
Speaker 1: The report also addressed the basically ubiquitous idea that there
Speaker 1: was an epidemic of juvenile delinquency, specifically among Mexican youths.
Speaker 1: All juvenile delinquency has increased recently in Los Angeles. This
Speaker 1: includes crimes committed by youths of Mexican origin. But the
Speaker 1: fact is that the increase of delinquency in the case
Speaker 1: of youths of Mexican families has been less than in
Speaker 1: the case of other national or racial groups, and less
Speaker 1: than the average increase for the community. The committee also
Speaker 1: made a number of recommendations to try to address the
Speaker 1: root causes of delinquency and gang formation, better training for
Speaker 1: police officers who were working in multi racial communities, better
Speaker 1: and more widely available youth and recreation facilities in Mexican neighborhoods,
Speaker 1: an end to discrimination and segregation at public facilities. What
Speaker 1: the committee really did not investigate, though, was the actions
Speaker 1: of the Anglo servicemen and any Anglo civilians who had
Speaker 1: participated in these riots. It didn't touch on the fact
Speaker 1: that large numbers of servicemen were leaving their bases during
Speaker 1: an actual war, that being World War Two, to go
Speaker 1: and attack civilians. So even though the report included an
Speaker 1: acknowledgment of racism as a factor in all of this,
Speaker 1: and even though it included a lot of common sense
Speaker 1: recommendations that could help the Mexican community in Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: it really did not touch on anything that could have
Speaker 1: addressed the servicemen's decision to stage a vigilante attack on
Speaker 1: Los Angeles's Mexican community. There was a whole lot of
Speaker 1: this is what we should do to prevent delinquency among
Speaker 1: Mexican youth, but virtually no, this is what we should
Speaker 1: do to prevent servicemen from forming a racist vigilante mob.
Speaker 1: This whole incident was really formative in both the Hispanic
Speaker 1: and the Anglo communities. It was a national news story,
Speaker 1: and for a lot of people who didn't live in
Speaker 1: the Southwest, it was the first time that they really
Speaker 1: heard about a significant Mexican minority living in the United States,
Speaker 1: which makes it particular ularly unfortunate that much of the
Speaker 1: news reporting was handled in such a racist way with
Speaker 1: the Hispanic and Latino community. The Sleepy Hollow murder case
Speaker 1: and the zoot Suit riots were both precursors to the
Speaker 1: Ticano movement, also called the Mexican American Civil rights movement.
Speaker 1: We've talked about some of the other events that were
Speaker 1: also part of the development of this movement, including Mendes
Speaker 1: versus Westminster, which was a school segregation case, and the
Speaker 1: case of Macario Garcia, who was the first Mexican national
Speaker 1: to be awarded the Medal of Honor, who was arrested
Speaker 1: after being denied service at a restaurant after returning home.
Speaker 1: There were also similar incidents in other cities after the
Speaker 1: zoot Suit riots, although not as massive or as widely
Speaker 1: reported as what took place in Los Angeles, and it
Speaker 1: could have become an international incident since most of the
Speaker 1: people targeted were not Mexican nationals, and because this happened
Speaker 1: during World War II, Mexico's diplomatic response was somewhat muted.
Speaker 1: There was also a lot of other just mass racist
Speaker 1: violence that happened that wasn't necessarily similar to the Zootsuit Riots,
Speaker 1: but did follow in the immediate months and years after this.
Speaker 1: It's also a whole other topic, but worth mentioning. Chavez
Speaker 1: Ravine was emptied through a series of evictions starting in
Speaker 1: nineteen forty nine, so just a few years after this,
Speaker 1: with the city originally saying that it was going to
Speaker 1: be redeveloped and that the evicted residents would get the
Speaker 1: first choice of the newly built homes instead. It's now
Speaker 1: the site of Dodger Stadium. There is also a Broadway
Speaker 1: play called zoot Suit, directed by Louis Miguel Valdez that
Speaker 1: debuted in nineteen seventy nine, and it was the first
Speaker 1: play with a Chicano director on Broadway that has also
Speaker 1: been made into a film. And there's also that song
Speaker 1: by the Cherry Pop and Daddy's which we're only mentioning
Speaker 1: so that everyone will know that, yes, we do know
Speaker 1: that it exists, and yeah, makes it sound like a
Speaker 1: whole lot of fun when it was not. It was
Speaker 1: not fun at all. Thanks so much for joining us
Speaker 1: on this Saturday. Since this episode is out of the archive,
Speaker 1: if you heard an email address or a Facebook RL
Speaker 1: or something similar over the course of the show, that
Speaker 1: could be obsolete now. Our current email address is History
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