Speaker 1: Hey, everybody. We are so excited that we are about
Speaker 1: to set out on our very first tour. In augusten,
Speaker 1: we will be in Atlanta, Georgia, Raleigh, North Carolina, Summerville, Massachusetts, Brooklyn,
Speaker 1: New York, and Washington, d C. Then in October eighteen,
Speaker 1: we will be in Seattle, Washington, Portland, Oregon, and Los
Speaker 1: Angeles and San Francisco, California. We're hoping that this will
Speaker 1: go really well and we can come to other cities
Speaker 1: and places that don't end in the World Coast sometime
Speaker 1: maybe next year. You can find out more information and
Speaker 1: get the links to buy tickets at missed in History
Speaker 1: dot com, slash tour That's missed in History dot com
Speaker 1: slash tour. Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History class
Speaker 1: from how Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to
Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly trying
Speaker 1: for the last I don't even know how many months
Speaker 1: I've had this note on my podcast shortlist that had
Speaker 1: in all capital letters the word June followed by zoot
Speaker 1: suit riots. But you may notice it is not June
Speaker 1: right now. It's a little after June. It's fine, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, unless you're listening to podcasts much later than
Speaker 1: they come out, and in somehow June of nineteen. So
Speaker 1: we're recording this in July. It'll be August before it
Speaker 1: comes out. I 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 I'm going to do
Speaker 1: it now, a couple of months late. As is often
Speaker 1: the case when we talk about riots on the show,
Speaker 1: the name of this one is really a misnomer. It
Speaker 1: didn't have a lot of the traits that people think
Speaker 1: of when you a riot. There was not really much
Speaker 1: property damage. It was more about attacking people, and it
Speaker 1: also wasn't really about the zoot suits, although zoot suits
Speaker 1: had come to symbolize a lot in Los Angeles and
Speaker 1: 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: gonna talk about Spain actively colonizing what's now California starting
Speaker 1: in the late seventeenth century, and the region was under
Speaker 1: Spanish control until the end of the Mexican War of
Speaker 1: Independence in eighteen twenty one, at which point it became
Speaker 1: a part of Mexico. After the Mexican American War ended
Speaker 1: in eighteen forty eight, Mexico seeded a huge swath of
Speaker 1: land in the southwest to the United States, including what
Speaker 1: would become California. California became the thirty first state on
Speaker 1: September nine, eighteen fifty. We talked more about the history
Speaker 1: of immigration between Mexico and the United States and our
Speaker 1: episode on the Brissero program, So we're not going to
Speaker 1: walk through all of that again today. But the border
Speaker 1: between these two nations wasn't particularly regulated until the nineteen teens.
Speaker 1: There were several waves of immigration from Mexico to the
Speaker 1: United States, including refugees fleeing the Mexican Revolution which started
Speaker 1: in nineteen ten. So by the nineteen forties, when the
Speaker 1: zoot Suit riots took place. The Mexican community in the
Speaker 1: southwestern United States included immigrants as well as people of
Speaker 1: Mexican ancestry whose families had been there since way before
Speaker 1: the state of California even existed. In Los Angeles and
Speaker 1: other cities, the Mexican population overwhelmingly lived in tight knit
Speaker 1: communities known as barrios, from the Spanish word for neighborhood,
Speaker 1: and these neighborhoods evolved through a range of social and
Speaker 1: economic conditions, as well as discriminatory housing policies and employment
Speaker 1: and lending practices. Basically, the same policies that enforced segregation
Speaker 1: of black residents in other parts of the country enforced
Speaker 1: segregation of Mexican and other Hispanic and Latino residents in
Speaker 1: the American Southwest. The barrios in Los Angeles included really
Speaker 1: densely populated urban neighborhoods, as well as jabez Ravine, which
Speaker 1: had been home to a predominantly Mexican population going back
Speaker 1: into the middle of the eighteen hundreds. Because of its
Speaker 1: steep terrain, parts of the jabez Ravine were almost rural.
Speaker 1: Poverty was widespread in these neighborhoods. The housing was frequently
Speaker 1: substandard and overcrowded, and often managed by predatory landlords. While
Speaker 1: the Anglo community tended to view the barrios as slums
Speaker 1: or eyesores, the people who were actually living there had
Speaker 1: extremely tight knit relationships with one another. There was a
Speaker 1: simultaneous mix of intense neighborhood and cultural pride and social
Speaker 1: and economic isolation from the rest of the city. That
Speaker 1: wasn't necessarily the case for the young people living in
Speaker 1: the barrios, though. In the nineteen forties. Young people in
Speaker 1: the barrios were predominantly the children of Mexican immigrants who
Speaker 1: had been born in the United States and were citizens,
Speaker 1: and many of them felt like outsiders both within and
Speaker 1: outside of their neighborhoods. They were being educated in English
Speaker 1: speaking American schools, and a lot of them wanted to
Speaker 1: experience life outside the barrio, or even leave the barrio.
Speaker 1: This really put them at odds with their parents, who
Speaker 1: tended to be traditional and conservative. These second generation Mexican
Speaker 1: Americans were also subject to huge pressure to assimilate with
Speaker 1: Anglo life from outside the barrio, and huge pressure to
Speaker 1: maintain a strong sense of Mexican cultural identity from within
Speaker 1: it and outside of their neighborhoods. They faced discrimination because
Speaker 1: of their ethnicity, and sometimes outright exclusion from the types
Speaker 1: of activity that would otherwise be completely typical for a teenager.
Speaker 1: Economic hardship, social isolation, exclusion from recreation and social activities
Speaker 1: in a sense of being an outsider are all factors
Speaker 1: that are cited as reasons why young people join gangs,
Speaker 1: and this happened in California in the nineteen thirties and
Speaker 1: forties as well, although we should make it really clear
Speaker 1: that a lot of the gangs in question were more
Speaker 1: like tight knit neighborhood clicks than criminal organizations. Rivalries between
Speaker 1: young people from different barrios could become really intense, though.
Speaker 1: I mean, there was definitely crime, and there definitely work
Speaker 1: criminal organizations, but overwhelmingly crimes were being committed by adults,
Speaker 1: not by adolescents. And the panic that we're about to
Speaker 1: talk about was about this nefarious specter of violent criminal
Speaker 1: teens and that that was really not what was going on.
Speaker 1: As Tracy just alluded to. In the media, these Mexican
Speaker 1: American youth were portrayed as violent and incorrigible delinquents. This
Speaker 1: became even more true in August of nineteen forty two,
Speaker 1: following a murder at a reservoir known as Sleepy Lagoon.
Speaker 1: Mexican youth used Sleepy Lagoon as a swimming hole because
Speaker 1: they weren't allowed to use the public swimming pools, and
Speaker 1: on August first, nineteen forty two, a fight broke out
Speaker 1: after a party near the reservoir and twenty two year
Speaker 1: old jose I Diaz was beaten and left for dead.
Speaker 1: Diaz had recently enlisted in the U. S Army and
Speaker 1: it was his last weekend before he was scheduled to leave.
Speaker 1: He died not long after reaching the hospital. In response
Speaker 1: to this murder, law enforcement rounded up roughly six hundred
Speaker 1: people in a citywide dragnet. Most of them were Mexican
Speaker 1: American and most of them were teenagers. Ultimately, twenty two
Speaker 1: teens and young men from the thirty eight Street neighborhood
Speaker 1: were arrested on murder charges, and seventeen of them were indicted.
Speaker 1: They were between the ages of fourteen and twenty two,
Speaker 1: and they were side in the largest mass trial in
Speaker 1: California history. This trial was a huge miscarriage of justice.
Speaker 1: The judge Charles Williams. Freaky was known as Sam Quentin
Speaker 1: Freaky because of how often he sentenced people to prison
Speaker 1: there and during the trial he consistently sided with the prosecution.
Speaker 1: The prosecution was making the case that the defendants were
Speaker 1: a violent street gang, and to that end, the judge
Speaker 1: refused to allow them to get clean clothes or have
Speaker 1: their hair cut, because their clothing, their hair, and their
Speaker 1: disheveled appearance was evidence of their gang status. We're going
Speaker 1: to get more into clothing in a bit, but just no.
Speaker 1: They basically kept them in a state that would keep
Speaker 1: the public mindset completely confirmed that they were everything horrible.
Speaker 1: These people were saying, yeah, even if when they originally
Speaker 1: were arrested they had been wearing neatly attired clothing, they
Speaker 1: were in these same clothes for the length of these proceedings,
Speaker 1: so they just came more and more disheveled. The defense
Speaker 1: also had seventeen different defendants to deal with, and the
Speaker 1: judge continually ruled that their attempts to confer with their
Speaker 1: clients were disruptive. The defendants were ultimately seated in two
Speaker 1: rows facing the jury, physically separated from their attorneys. Some
Speaker 1: of the defendants also really did not take this trial seriously.
Speaker 1: Some of them had never even met the victim and
Speaker 1: seemed to just assume that they were definitely going to
Speaker 1: be acquitted because clearly they were not involved. That meant
Speaker 1: that an all white jury was constantly face to face
Speaker 1: with a bunch of teenagers, some of whom were chatting
Speaker 1: with each other and rolling their eyes and generally acting
Speaker 1: like teenagers who weren't really being supervised in the courtroom.
Speaker 1: The trial lasted until January of nineteen forty three. In
Speaker 1: the end, five of the defendants were acquitted. The rest
Speaker 1: were found guilty of a number of crimes and sentenced
Speaker 1: to between six months and life in prison, depending on
Speaker 1: the charge. During these proceedings, girls and young women from
Speaker 1: the thirty Street neighborhood had also been called to testify
Speaker 1: and to 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 A Street
Speaker 1: gang as a violent gang, and the whole incident was
Speaker 1: used as evidence that Mexican use were inherently criminal and dangerous.
Speaker 1: Mexican US 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 brios, 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, spelt
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: nine four, although the charges were never formally cleared. The
Speaker 1: appellate court found a number of problems with that original trial,
Speaker 1: from inadmissible evidence being admitted, to inadequate defense representation, to
Speaker 1: the judge's treatment of the most vocal of the defense attorneys. Today,
Speaker 1: the murder of Jose A Diaz is still officially unsolved.
Speaker 1: Most of the young men who had been convicted of
Speaker 1: his murder were still in prison when the zoo Suit
Speaker 1: Riots happened. We're going to get into the riots, and
Speaker 1: before that, into the zoot suits after a sponsor break.
Speaker 1: The zoot Suit Riots were named for a style of
Speaker 1: clothing that was popular among Mexican American youth in Los
Speaker 1: Angeles in the nineteen thirties and forties. The etymology of
Speaker 1: zoot suit is a little unclear. You'll see a lot
Speaker 1: of different places of like this is the where the
Speaker 1: term zoot suit comes from, and they all kind of
Speaker 1: contradict each other. It's also unclear exactly who made the
Speaker 1: first one. But these suits grew out of jazz culture
Speaker 1: in African American communities. In other parts of the United States,
Speaker 1: they were really popular amongst swing dancers because the cut
Speaker 1: and the volume of the fabric really accentuated the dancing.
Speaker 1: Zoot Suits became popular among minority communities all across the
Speaker 1: United States. Whichever minority community was living in a particular
Speaker 1: place was probably also wearing zoot suits. Even though we
Speaker 1: are talking about Mexican Americans in this episode, these suits
Speaker 1: were culturally very important in these other communities. They are
Speaker 1: part of a lot of literature and essays from the
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties and forties, especially by Hispanic and black writers.
Speaker 1: Among Mexican Americans, zoot suits were one part of a
Speaker 1: counterculture movement known as Patuco. Patuco incorporated zoot suits along
Speaker 1: with music and dance and an inventive sling called calo,
Speaker 1: which combines Spanish, English, and jazz inspired words, as well
Speaker 1: as words from other influences. Zoot Suits were the most
Speaker 1: recognizable hallmark of the Pachuco man. These are suits with
Speaker 1: high waisted pants, suspenders, and very wide legs that then
Speaker 1: are pegged at the ankle. The corresponding coats are very
Speaker 1: long and have exaggerated broad shoulders. Men usually wore them
Speaker 1: with a coordinating pork pie hat and a distinctive watch chain.
Speaker 1: Some Pachucas are women in this culture, wore full zoot
Speaker 1: suits with the pants. Others paired them with short skirts,
Speaker 1: big hair, and bright makeup, regardless of which she was doing, though,
Speaker 1: women who dressed this way were pushing gender norms. Wearing
Speaker 1: the pants was thought of as too masculine, but the
Speaker 1: short skirts and the loud makeup were regarded as too
Speaker 1: aggressively feminine and too sexual. To both Anglos and the
Speaker 1: Mexican parents of these youths, Pachuco wasn't a culture. It
Speaker 1: was just another word for punk or thug. Mexican parents
Speaker 1: worried that their children were going to quote become pachucos,
Speaker 1: and among Anglos, part of the response to this culture
Speaker 1: might be summed up as how dare you zoos? Suits
Speaker 1: were expensive, and news reporting about the style tended to
Speaker 1: hype up the cost. But Chucos took great care in
Speaker 1: their appearance. They walked with a swagger, and they took
Speaker 1: pride in being able to dance and going out and
Speaker 1: having a good time. So from Anglos there was this
Speaker 1: whole element of how dare you spend so much on
Speaker 1: a suit when you should be living in poverty? How
Speaker 1: dare you walk with that swagger when you live in
Speaker 1: a slum. Caesar Chavez, who co founded the National farm
Speaker 1: Workers Association with the Laura Sueta, described it this way.
Speaker 1: Quote we were a minority group of a minority group,
Speaker 1: so in a way we were challenging cops by being
Speaker 1: with two or three friends and dressing sharp. But in
Speaker 1: those days, I was prepared for any sacrifice to be
Speaker 1: able to dress the way I wanted to dress. I
Speaker 1: thought it looked sharp and meat and it was the style.
Speaker 1: And 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 and 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 Patuco'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 ninety two, and it banned a number of
Speaker 1: extra flourishes on clothing that required more fabric, including cuffs, pleats,
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 um and at
Speaker 1: first tailor's got around this by making zoot suits out
Speaker 1: of other fabrics besides wool, but in October of nineteen
Speaker 1: forty two, the WPB specifically banned those as well. It
Speaker 1: wasn't illegal to wear a zoot suit, but it was
Speaker 1: illegal to make them, although bootleg tailors continued to do
Speaker 1: it anyway. The City of Los Angeles also debated banning
Speaker 1: the wearing of zoot suits that year, but ultimately did not.
Speaker 1: By nineteen forty three, zoot suits were very closely associated
Speaker 1: with crime and with juvenile delinquency. We talked before the
Speaker 1: break about the widespread media coverage of Mexican youth portraying
Speaker 1: them as incorrigible criminals. Tied to that stereotype was the
Speaker 1: clothing that they were wearing. Under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's
Speaker 1: Good Neighbor Policy, which was meant to improve American relationships
Speaker 1: with Latin America, news outlets in some cities stopped using
Speaker 1: the word Mexican and crime reporting. Instead, they were writing
Speaker 1: things like zoot suited thugs, which everyone read as basically
Speaker 1: a Mexican gangster in a zoot suit. This use of
Speaker 1: language didn't really do anything to shield Mexicans from the
Speaker 1: perception that they were criminals, and it did reinforce the
Speaker 1: connection between zoot suits and crime. On June twod ninety three,
Speaker 1: an article in The l A Times called the zoot
Speaker 1: suit quote a uniform of delinquency. Calls to police were
Speaker 1: common 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 U. S Military in Los Angeles
Speaker 1: at any given time. Some of them were passing through,
Speaker 1: some were preparing to deploy somewhere on shore leave, and
Speaker 1: some were training at the Naval and Marine Corps Reserve
Speaker 1: Center in Chavez Ravine, 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 zoos suitors were
Speaker 1: also draft dodgers, and while that may have been the
Speaker 1: case for some, a lot of the Mexican youths who
Speaker 1: were part of the Patuco 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 day. Each fight became
Speaker 1: justification for the next one, and sometimes they erupted into
Speaker 1: mass violence. It's not totally clear what caused these ongoing
Speaker 1: clashes between service members and civilians of Mexican descent to
Speaker 1: escalate and to 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 nineteen forty three, which left
Speaker 1: one sailor with a broken jaw. These riots started on
Speaker 1: June three, and we're at least in theory and retaliation
Speaker 1: for that earlier fight. And we're going to get into
Speaker 1: the details of the zoot suit 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 three,
Speaker 1: a group of about fifty sailors left the Naval and
Speaker 1: Marine Corps Reserve Center in Chavez Ravine. They were are
Speaker 1: with makeshift weapons and they made their way through the
Speaker 1: neighborhoods near the armory looking for a fight. They specifically
Speaker 1: looked for and attacked anyone wearing a zoot suit This
Speaker 1: was the first night of the zoot suit riots. June
Speaker 1: four was a Friday, and that evening sailors began hiring
Speaker 1: cabs to take them into the barrios. They treated this
Speaker 1: like a seek and destroy mission, seeking out and beating
Speaker 1: Mexican youth, especially the ones in zoot suits, 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 five, 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 pachucos. Has included a group of musicians who were
Speaker 1: leaving Aztec Recording Company. On June seven, news reports spread
Speaker 1: that zoos 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.
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 zoot suit riots, and throughout this sort of war,
Speaker 1: servicemen attacked and beat up young men in zoot suits.
Speaker 1: They 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 targets 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: station 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 zoot
Speaker 1: suitors learn lesson in fight with servicemen. Here's how The
Speaker 1: New York Times kicked off its reporting on June seven,
Speaker 1: quote subdued and no longer ready to do battle. Twenty
Speaker 1: eight zoot suitors stripped of their garash clothing and with
Speaker 1: County jail barber's hopefully eyeing their flowing ductail haircuts, languished
Speaker 1: behind bars today after a second night of battle with
Speaker 1: fleers 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 My
Speaker 1: Day column, saying, quote, the question goes deeper than a 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 a long way back, and
Speaker 1: we do not always face these problems as we should.
Speaker 1: After this appeared, the l A Times accused her of
Speaker 1: sewing racial discord. On June eighth, the violence largely stopped
Speaker 1: because the servicemen were barred from leaving base, and downtown
Speaker 1: Los Angeles was made out of bounds for soldiers and sailors.
Speaker 1: At the same time, the official Navy position was that
Speaker 1: all of the actions by sailors were in self defense.
Speaker 1: That was patently false. They were picking the fights themselves.
Speaker 1: The short patrol was also given orders to arrest any
Speaker 1: member of the military whose behavior was disorderly. On the ninth,
Speaker 1: the Los Angeles City Council passed a resolution banning the
Speaker 1: public wearing of zoot suits, with fifty days in jail
Speaker 1: as punishment. Although there had been hundreds of injuries, some
Speaker 1: of them severe, there were no deaths during the zoot
Speaker 1: suit riots, but the racial aspect of the violence is
Speaker 1: obvious by the numbers. In terms of hospitalizations, about one
Speaker 1: hundred Mexican Americans suffered serious injuries compared to roughly sixteen servicemen.
Speaker 1: There also would have been lots and lots of people
Speaker 1: who were hurt but didn't seek medical care. There were
Speaker 1: also arrests of close to a hundred Mexican Americans compared
Speaker 1: to about twenty servicemen and about thirty non Hispanic civilians.
Speaker 1: After this was over, two committees were formed to investigate
Speaker 1: and find out the cause of the riots. One was
Speaker 1: a Citizens Committee ordered by California Governor Earl Warren. The
Speaker 1: other was an Anti American Activities investigation presided over by
Speaker 1: State Senator Jack B. Tenney, which looked for fascist and
Speaker 1: Nazi instigators. No evidence was ever found or published to
Speaker 1: back up the whole fascists ash Nazi angle, but the
Speaker 1: Citizens Committee report was clear quote and undertaking to deal
Speaker 1: with the cause of these outbreaks, the existence of race
Speaker 1: prejudice cannot be ignored. In response to this, Los Angeles
Speaker 1: Mayor Fletcher Born, on the other hand, maintained that race
Speaker 1: was not a factor and continued to blame the riots
Speaker 1: on the zoot suitors and on juvenile delinquents. The Citizens
Speaker 1: Committee report outlined some of the social conditions that had
Speaker 1: led to all of this. Quote, there are approximately two
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty thousand persons of Mexican descent in Los
Speaker 1: Angeles County. Living conditions among the majority of these people
Speaker 1: are far below the general level of the community. Housing
Speaker 1: is inadequate, Sanitation is bad and is made worse by congestion.
Speaker 1: Recreational facilities for children are very poor, and there is
Speaker 1: insufficient supervision of the playgrounds, swimming pools, and other youth centers.
Speaker 1: Such conditions are breeding places for juvenile delinquency. The report
Speaker 1: also addressed the basically ubiquitous idea that there was an
Speaker 1: epidemic of juvenile delinquency, specifically among Mexican youth saying, quote,
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 multiracial communities, better and
Speaker 1: 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 basis 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: acknowledgement 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 serviceman's decision to stage a vigilante attack on
Speaker 1: Los Angeles 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 particularly unfortunate that much of the news
Speaker 1: reporting was handled in such a racist way with the
Speaker 1: Hispanic and Latino community. The Sleepy Hollow murder case and
Speaker 1: the zoot Suit riots were both precursors to the Chicano movement,
Speaker 1: also called the Mexican American Civil rights movement. We've talked
Speaker 1: about some of the other events that were also part
Speaker 1: of the development of this movement, including Mendes versus Westminster,
Speaker 1: which was a school segregation case, and the case of
Speaker 1: Maccario Garcia, who was the first Mexican national to be
Speaker 1: awarded the Medal of Honor, who was arrested after being
Speaker 1: denied service at a restaurant after returning home. There were
Speaker 1: also similar incidents in other cities after the zoot Suit riots,
Speaker 1: although not as massive or as widely reported as what
Speaker 1: took place in Los Angeles, and it could have become
Speaker 1: an international incident since most of the people targeted were
Speaker 1: not Mexican now tionals, and because this happened during World
Speaker 1: War Two, Mexico's diplomatic response was somewhat muted. There was
Speaker 1: also a lot of other just mass racist violence that
Speaker 1: happened that wasn't necessarily similar to the zoot Suit 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, just a few years after this, with
Speaker 1: the city originally saying that it was going to be
Speaker 1: redeveloped and that the evicted residents would get the first
Speaker 1: choice of the newly built homes instead. It's now the
Speaker 1: site of Dodger Stadium. There is also a Broadway play
Speaker 1: called zoot Suit, directed by Luis Miguel Valdez that debuted
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy nine, and it was the first play
Speaker 1: with the Chicano director on Broadway that has also been
Speaker 1: made into a film. And there's also that song by
Speaker 1: the Cherry Pop and Daddy's which were only mentioning so
Speaker 1: that everyone will know that, yes, we do know that
Speaker 1: it exists. Uh. 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. Uh. Do you have some listener
Speaker 1: mail for us? Sure? Do. I'm chuckling because the subject
Speaker 1: line of the email is yea for coal mining, Which
Speaker 1: this isn't a sentence that you see in your email
Speaker 1: all that often. Uh and in many contexts. Um, this
Speaker 1: is from Rochelle. Rochelle says, good morning, ladies. I've never
Speaker 1: written into a podcast before, but I have been so
Speaker 1: taken by your podcast I can't help myself. I have
Speaker 1: only started listening to your podcast a couple of months ago,
Speaker 1: but I am quickly catching up to the most recent episodes.
Speaker 1: You have such a delightful, wonderful podcast that helps me
Speaker 1: get through dull days at work. It's been a lifelong
Speaker 1: history buff and fun fact fiend, and your podcast is
Speaker 1: a wonderful mixture of both. For me, I would just
Speaker 1: like to take a moment and say I love fun.
Speaker 1: In fact, fiend to return to the email I'm writing
Speaker 1: in because I've just listened to the abra Van disaster
Speaker 1: episode from November. I'm from Scranton, Pennsylvania. Before the office,
Speaker 1: it was most famous as a coal mining area. Northeastern
Speaker 1: Pennsylvania is the location of the largest deposit of anthracite
Speaker 1: coal in the world. The two most common types of
Speaker 1: coal are anthracite and but too minus coal, anthracite being
Speaker 1: the rarer of the two. My grandfather on my dad's
Speaker 1: side and my great grandfather on my mother's side were
Speaker 1: coal miners. We have had our own mining disasters switched sadly,
Speaker 1: as you said in the episode, are all the same.
Speaker 1: I am a metal smith and for my m F
Speaker 1: faith thesis, I created sculptures and paintings telling the stories
Speaker 1: of coal mining in northeastern Pennsylvania, with the main takeaway
Speaker 1: being that this story is common a thousand times over
Speaker 1: and being told through the lens of Scranton. Rachel then
Speaker 1: ends with some episode suggestions for future episodes, and I
Speaker 1: just wanted to say thanks for sending this email. If
Speaker 1: you want to send us pictures of your m F
Speaker 1: faith thesis. I would be super interested in seeing that
Speaker 1: as well. Uh so, thank you, Rochelle. If you would
Speaker 1: like to write to us about this or any other podcast,
Speaker 1: we are at History podcast at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: We're also all over social media at missed in History.
Speaker 1: That is our Facebook and our Twitter, and our Instagram
Speaker 1: and our Pinterest. You can come to our website, which
Speaker 1: is missed in History dot com and you will find
Speaker 1: show notes for all the episodes that Holly and I
Speaker 1: have done together, as well as the searchable archive of
Speaker 1: every episode that's ever been on this show. And you
Speaker 1: can subscribe to our podcast on Apple podcasts, Google Podcasts,
Speaker 1: and wherever else you get your podcasts. For more on
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com