0:02

Happy Saturday. Today is

0:04

the eightieth anniversary of the start of

0:06

a multi day outbreak of violence

0:08

in Los Angeles that came to be known

0:10

as the zoot Suit Riots. Our

0:13

episode on the zoot Suit Riots came

0:15

out on August thirteenth, twenty eighteen,

0:17

even though I had been planning for months

0:20

to do it in connection to the seventy

0:22

fifth anniversary, which took place that

0:24

year. I had my act together this

0:26

time around, though, And this is Today's Saturday

0:29

Classic Welcome

0:33

to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a

0:35

production of iHeartRadio.

0:43

Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm

0:45

Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Frye.

0:48

For the last I don't even know how many months

0:50

I've had this note on my podcast

0:52

shortlist that had in all capital

0:54

letters the word June followed

0:57

by Zootsuit Riots. You

1:00

may notice it is not June right now. It's

1:02

a little after June. It's fine,

1:05

yeah, I mean, unless you're listening to podcasts

1:07

much later than they come out, and in somehow June

1:10

of twenty nineteen, So we're recording

1:12

this in July. It'll be August before

1:14

it comes out. I one hundred percent dropped

1:17

that ball on this thing that I had a note to

1:19

myself to do for months and months. But

1:21

because the zoot Suit riots happened

1:24

seventy five years ago this past June,

1:26

and because we got a bunch of listener requests

1:28

for it, and because I answered a

1:30

lot of those requests by saying that

1:32

I was doing it in June of twenty

1:35

eighteen, I'm going to do it now, a couple

1:37

of months late. As is often

1:39

the case when we talk about riots on the show, the name

1:41

of this one is really a misnomer. It

1:43

didn't have a lot of the traits that people think

1:46

of when you say riot. There

1:48

was not really much property damage.

1:51

It was more about attacking people.

1:54

And it also wasn't really about

1:56

the zoot suits, although zoot suits

1:58

had come to symbolize a lot in

2:01

Los Angeles and in other parts of the United

2:03

States when this happened. So today

2:05

we're going to talk about some context

2:07

of the Mexican community in Los Angeles

2:10

and the nineteen forties, as well as a

2:12

murder that became a major precursor

2:14

to this mass violence, and then

2:16

we will talk about the violence itself.

2:19

Okay, So to start it off, we're going to talk about

2:21

Spain actively colonizing

2:23

what's now California starting in

2:25

the late seventeenth century, and

2:27

the region was under Spanish control until

2:30

the end of the Mexican War of Independence

2:32

in eighteen twenty one, at which point

2:34

it became a part of Mexico. After

2:37

the Mexican American War ended in eighteen

2:39

forty eight, Mexico seeded a

2:41

huge swath of land in the southwest

2:44

to the United States, including what would

2:46

become California. California

2:49

became the thirty first state on September

2:51

ninth, eighteen fifty We talk

2:53

more about the history of immigration between

2:56

Mexico and the United States in our twenty

2:58

sixteen episode on the Brazil Programs,

3:00

so we're not going to walk through all of that

3:02

again today, but the border

3:05

between these two nations wasn't particularly

3:07

regulated until the nineteen teens. There

3:10

were several waves of immigration

3:12

from Mexico to the United States, including

3:14

refugees fleeing the Mexican Revolution,

3:17

which started in nineteen ten. So

3:19

by the nineteen forties, when the Zootsuit

3:21

Riots took place, the Mexican

3:23

community in the southwestern United States

3:26

included immigrants as well as people

3:28

of Mexican ancestry whose families had

3:30

been there since way before the state of

3:32

California even existed. In

3:34

Los Angeles and other cities, the

3:37

Mexican population overwhelmingly

3:39

lived in tight knit communities known as

3:41

barrios, from the Spanish word for neighborhood,

3:44

and these neighborhoods evolved through a range

3:46

of social and economic conditions, as

3:48

well as discriminatory housing policies

3:51

and employment and lending practices.

3:54

Basically the same policies that enforced

3:57

segregation of black residents in other parts

3:59

of the country enforced segregation

4:01

of Mexican and other Hispanic and Latino

4:04

residents in the American Southwest.

4:06

The barrios in Los Angeles included

4:09

really densely populated urban

4:11

neighborhoods, as well as Chavez Ravine,

4:14

which had been home to a predominantly Mexican

4:16

population going back into the middle of the eighteen

4:18

hundreds. Because of its steep

4:20

terrain, parts of the Chavez Ravine were

4:22

almost rural. Poverty was

4:25

widespread in these neighborhoods. The

4:27

housing was frequently substandard and overcrowded,

4:30

and often managed by predatory landlords.

4:33

While the Anglo community tended to view the

4:35

barrios as slums or eyes sores.

4:38

The people who were actually living there had extremely

4:41

tight knit relationships with one another. There

4:43

was a simultaneous mix of intense

4:45

neighborhood and cultural pride and

4:48

social and economic isolation from

4:50

the rest of the city. That wasn't necessarily

4:53

the case for the young people living in the barrios,

4:55

though. In the nineteen forties,

4:58

young people in the barrios were dominantly

5:00

the children of Mexican immigrants who

5:02

had been born in the United States and were

5:04

citizens, and many of them felt

5:06

like outsiders both within and

5:09

outside of their neighborhoods. They were being

5:11

educated in English speaking American

5:13

schools, and a lot of them wanted to experience

5:16

life outside the barrio, or even leave

5:18

the barrio. This really put them at

5:20

odds with their parents, who tended to be

5:22

traditional and conservative. These

5:25

second generation Mexican Americans

5:27

were also subject to huge pressure

5:29

to assimilate with Anglo life

5:31

from outside the barrio, and

5:34

huge pressure to maintain a strong sense

5:36

of Mexican cultural identity from

5:38

within it and outside of

5:40

their neighborhoods. They faced discrimination because

5:42

of their ethnicity and sometimes outright

5:45

exclusion from the types of activities

5:47

that would otherwise be completely typical

5:49

for a teenager. Economic hardship,

5:52

social isolation, exclusion

5:55

from recreation and social activities,

5:57

and a sense of being an outsider are all

5:59

factors that are cited as reasons

6:01

why young people join gangs, and

6:03

this happened in California in the nineteen thirties

6:06

and forties as well. Although we should make it really

6:08

clear that a lot of the gangs

6:10

in question were more like tight knit

6:12

neighborhood clicks than criminal

6:14

organizations. Rivalries

6:16

between young people from different barrios could

6:18

become really intense, though. I mean, there

6:21

was definitely crime, and there definitely

6:23

were criminal organizations,

6:26

but overwhelmingly crimes were being

6:28

committed by adults, not by

6:30

adolescents. And the panic

6:32

that we're about to talk about was about

6:35

this nefarious specter of

6:37

violent criminal teens and

6:40

that that was really not what was going on. As

6:42

Tracy just alluded to. In the media, these

6:45

Mexican American youth were portrayed as

6:47

violent and incorrigible delinquents.

6:50

This became even more true in August

6:52

of nineteen forty two, following a murder

6:54

at a reservoir known as Sleepy Lagoon.

6:57

Mexican youth used Sleepy Lagoon as

6:59

a swimtle because they weren't allowed to use

7:01

the public swimming pools, and

7:03

on August first, nineteen forty two,

7:06

a fight broke out after a party near the

7:08

reservoir and twenty two year old

7:10

Jose Diaz was beaten and left

7:12

for dead. Diaz had recently

7:15

enlisted in the US Army and it was his last

7:17

weekend before he was scheduled to leave.

7:20

He died not long after reaching the hospital.

7:23

In response to this murder, law

7:25

enforcement rounded up roughly six

7:27

hundred people in a citywide

7:29

dragnet. Most of them were Mexican

7:32

American and most of them were teenagers.

7:35

Ultimately, twenty two teens and young

7:37

men from the thirty eighth Street neighborhood were arrested

7:40

on murder charges, and seventeen

7:42

of them were indicted. They were

7:44

between the ages of fourteen and twenty two, and

7:46

they were tried in the largest mass

7:49

trial in California history. This

7:52

trial was a huge miscarriage

7:54

of justice. The judge,

7:56

Charles Williams Fricky, was known as

7:58

sam Quentin Fricky because of how often

8:01

he sentenced people to prison there and

8:03

during the trial he consistently sided

8:06

with the prosecution. The

8:08

prosecution was making the case that the defendants

8:10

were a violent street gang, and to that end,

8:13

the judge refused to allow them to get

8:15

clean clothes or have their hair cut because

8:17

their clothing, their hair, and their disheveled

8:20

appearance was evidence of their gang

8:22

status. We're going to get more into

8:24

clothing in a bit, but just know they basically

8:27

kept them in a state that would keep the

8:29

public mindset completely confirmed

8:31

that they were everything horrible. These people were saying,

8:34

yeah, even if when they

8:36

originally were arrested they had

8:39

been wearing neatly attired

8:41

clothing, they were in these same clothes

8:44

for the length of these proceedings, so they

8:47

just became more and more disheveled. The

8:49

defense also had seventeen different

8:51

defendants to deal with, and the judge

8:54

continually ruled that their attempts

8:56

to confer with their clients were disruptive.

8:59

The defense fendants were ultimately seated in two

9:01

rows facing the jury, physically

9:03

separated from their attorneys. Some

9:05

of the defendants also really did not take this

9:08

trial seriously. Some of them

9:10

had never even met the victim

9:12

and seemed to just assume that they were definitely

9:15

going to be acquitted because clearly

9:17

they were not involved. That

9:19

meant that an all white jury was

9:22

constantly face to face with a bunch

9:24

of teenagers, some of whom were chatting

9:26

with each other and rolling their eyes and

9:28

generally acting like teenagers

9:31

who weren't really being supervised in

9:33

the courtroom. The trial lasted

9:35

until January of nineteen forty three.

9:38

In the end, five of the defendants

9:40

were acquitted. The rest were found

9:42

guilty of a number of crimes and sentenced

9:45

to between six months and life in prison,

9:48

depending on the charge. During

9:50

these proceedings, girls and young women

9:52

from the thirty eighth Street neighborhood had also

9:54

been called to testify and to participate

9:57

in the investigation, but they refused to

9:59

cooperate. Afterward, they

10:01

were taken from their parents' custody, made

10:04

wards the state, and placed in a reform

10:06

school called Ventura School for Girls,

10:09

and they remained there until they

10:11

were legally adults. This trial

10:13

and the news reporting that surrounded it,

10:15

continued to inflame tensions between

10:18

the Mexican and Anglo communities in Los

10:20

Angeles. News reports described

10:23

the kids from the thirty eighth Street gang as

10:25

a violent gang, and the whole incident

10:27

was used as evidence that Mexican youth

10:29

were inherently criminal and dangerous.

10:32

Mexican youth gangs were blamed for all kinds

10:35

of crime and social ills. The

10:37

idea of a dangerous Mexican criminal

10:39

element spread among the Anglo

10:41

population. Rather than doing

10:44

anything about the social and economic

10:46

conditions and the barrios, lawmakers

10:48

and media instead used these young

10:51

people as evidence of a nefarious

10:53

criminal element that needed to be dealt

10:55

with, and Mexican American youth,

10:58

who already felt like outsiders, felt

11:00

even more targeted by an obviously

11:03

unfair legal and law enforcement

11:05

system. After two years

11:07

of advocacy by the Sleepy Lagoon Defense

11:10

Committee, these convictions were overturned

11:12

on appeal in nineteen forty four. Although

11:15

the charges were never formally cleared.

11:18

The appellate court found a number of problems

11:20

with that original trial, from inadmissible

11:22

evidence being admitted, to inadequate

11:24

defense representation to the judge's

11:27

treatment of the most vocal of the defense

11:29

attorneys. Today, the

11:31

murder of Jose Dias is still officially

11:33

unsolved. Most of the young

11:36

men who had been convicted of his murder

11:38

were still in prison when the zoot Suit

11:40

riots happened. Were going to get

11:42

into the riots, and before that into

11:44

the zoot suits after a sponsor break.

11:56

The Zootsuit Riots were named for a style

11:58

of clothing that was popular among the Mexican

12:00

American youth in Los Angeles in the nineteen

12:02

thirties and forties. The etymology

12:05

of zoot suit is a little unclear. You'll see

12:07

a lot of different places of like this is the where the

12:09

term zootsuit comes from, and they all kind

12:11

of contradict each other. It's also unclear

12:13

exactly who made the first one. But

12:16

these suits grew out of jazz culture

12:18

in African American communities. In other

12:20

parts of the United States, they were really popular

12:23

among swing dancers because the cut

12:25

and the volume of the fabric really accentuated

12:27

the dancing. Zootsuits became

12:30

popular among minority communities all

12:32

across the United States. Whichever

12:34

minority community was living in a particular

12:37

place was probably also wearing zoot

12:39

suits. Even though we are talking

12:41

about Mexican Americans in this episode,

12:43

these suits were culturally very important

12:45

in these other communities. They are part

12:48

of a lot of literature and essays from

12:50

the nineteen thirties and forties, especially

12:52

by Hispanic and Black writers. Among

12:55

Mexican Americans, zoot suits were

12:57

one part of a counterculture movement

12:59

known as Pachuco. Patuco

13:01

incorporated zootsuits along with music

13:04

and dance and an inventive slang called

13:06

calo, which combined Spanish,

13:08

English, and jazz inspired words,

13:11

as well as words from other influences.

13:13

Zootsuits were the most recognizable

13:15

hallmark of the Pachuco man. These

13:18

are suits with high waisted pants, suspenders,

13:21

and very wide legs that then are pegged

13:23

at the ankle. The corresponding

13:25

coats are very long and have exaggerated

13:28

broad shoulders. Men usually

13:30

wore them with a coordinating pork pie

13:32

hat and a distinctive watch chain. Some

13:36

Pachucas are women in this culture,

13:38

wore full zootsuits with the pants.

13:41

Others paired them with short skirts,

13:43

big hair, and bright makeup, regardless

13:46

of which she was doing, though, women who

13:48

dressed this way were really pushing gender

13:50

norms. Wearing the pants was thought

13:52

of as too masculine, but the

13:54

short skirts and the loud makeup were

13:57

regarded as too aggressively feminine

13:59

and to two sexual to

14:01

both Anglos and the Mexican parents

14:04

of these youths. Pachuco wasn't a culture.

14:06

It was just another word for punk

14:09

or thug. Mexican parents

14:11

worried that their children were going to quote become

14:13

Pachuco's, and among Anglos,

14:15

part of the response to this culture might be summed

14:18

up as how dare you zoot?

14:20

Suits were expensive, and news reporting

14:22

about the style tended to hype up the cost.

14:26

Pachucos took great care in their appearance.

14:28

They walked with a swagger, and they took pride

14:30

in being able to dance and going

14:32

out and having a good time. So

14:35

from Anglos there was this whole element of

14:37

how dare you spend so much on a suit when

14:39

you should be living in poverty? How dare you

14:42

walk with that swagger when you live

14:44

in a slum. Caesar

14:46

Shavez, who co founded the National farm

14:48

Workers' Association with the lur Shuerta,

14:50

described it this way. Quote we

14:52

were a minority group of a minority

14:55

group, so in a way we were challenging cops

14:57

by being with two or three friends and

14:59

dressing sharp. But in those days,

15:01

I was prepared for any sacrifice to be able

15:03

to dress the way I wanted to dress. I

15:06

thought it looked sharp and neat and it was

15:08

the style. And to circle back around

15:10

to the Sleepy Lagoon murder case, the

15:13

defendants were part of a culture that valued

15:15

dressing well and taking care of their clothing

15:17

in appearance. But again, if you recall,

15:19

they were forced to wear the same increasingly

15:22

shabby clothes for the duration

15:24

of their trial. So for Patucco's

15:27

this one outfit, the zoot suit had

15:29

a whole lot of adolescent rebelliousness

15:31

and community pride and Mexican American

15:34

culture all rolled up into

15:36

it, and in the nineteen forties, wearing

15:38

one became an overtly political act.

15:41

In another way as well, during

15:43

World War Two, fabric was tightly

15:45

rationed, and zoot suits used a lot

15:48

of fabric. The Wartime Productions

15:50

Board limited the use of wool in

15:53

March of nineteen forty two, and it banned

15:55

a number of extra flourishes on clothing

15:58

that required more fabric, including cuffs,

16:01

plats, pocket flaps, and vests.

16:04

Zoot Suits were pretty much all

16:06

extra fabric. Having made one,

16:08

I will wholly endorse this fact.

16:11

They take up a lot of yardage

16:14

and at first tailor's got around this by

16:16

making zoot suits out of other fabrics

16:18

besides wool, but in October

16:20

of nineteen forty two, the WPB

16:23

specifically banned those as well.

16:25

It wasn't illegal to wear a zoot suit, but

16:28

it was illegal to make them,

16:30

although bootleg tailors continued to do

16:32

it anyway. The City of Los

16:34

Angeles also debated banning the wearing

16:36

of zoot suits that year, but ultimately

16:38

did not. By nineteen

16:40

forty three, zoot suits were very

16:43

closely associated with crime

16:45

and with juvenile delinquency. We

16:48

talked before the break about the widespread

16:50

media coverage of Mexican youth

16:52

portraying them as incorrigible criminals.

16:56

Tied to that stereotype was the clothing

16:58

that they were wearing. Under present Franklin

17:00

Delano Roosevelt's Good Neighbor Policy,

17:02

which was meant to improve American relationships

17:05

with Latin America, news outlets

17:07

in some cities stopped using the word

17:10

Mexican and crime reporting. Instead,

17:12

they were writing things like zoot suited

17:15

thugs, which everyone read

17:17

as basically a Mexican gangster

17:19

in a zoot suit. This use of language

17:22

didn't really do anything to shield Mexicans

17:24

from the perception that they were criminals, and

17:27

it did reinforce the connection between zoot

17:29

suits and crime. On June

17:32

second, nineteen forty three, an article

17:34

in the La Times called the zoot suit quote

17:36

a uniform of delinquency. Calls

17:39

to police were common just because

17:41

someone in a zoot suit was inherently suspicious.

17:45

Simultaneously, in the early nineteen

17:47

forties, there were a lot of

17:49

service members from the US military

17:51

in Los Angeles. At any given time.

17:54

Some of them were passing through, some were

17:56

preparing to deploy, some were on shore

17:58

leave, and some were training at

18:00

the Naval and Marine Corps Reserve Center

18:03

in Chavezravine, also

18:05

known as the Naval Reserve Armory. This

18:07

facility opened in a predominantly

18:10

Mexican part of the city in nineteen forty.

18:13

Especially on weekends, the number

18:15

of military personnel in Los Angeles

18:17

could swell to about fifty thousand.

18:20

A lot of these servicemen felt like the zoot

18:22

suitors were deliberately antagonizing

18:24

them. They were wearing unpatriotic

18:27

clothing that flew in the face of wartime

18:29

rationing. And on top of that was

18:31

the perception that the zoot suitors were also

18:34

draft dodgers. And while that may have

18:36

been the case for some, a lot of

18:38

the Mexican youth who were part of the Pachuco

18:40

culture were too young to enlist.

18:43

There were also stories of men wearing their zoot

18:45

suits when they reported in and being

18:47

turned down for military service because

18:49

of the perception that they would be troublemakers.

18:52

And of course, there were plenty of Mexican

18:54

Americans serving in the armed forces, although

18:57

numbers were not clear because their numbers

18:59

were not separated out from the white population.

19:01

At the same time, there was also a lot

19:04

of overall anti immigrant sentiment

19:06

going on, even though most of

19:08

the young people being targeted here

19:10

were American citizens of Mexican

19:13

descent. What we're talking

19:15

about today was happening in parallel

19:17

with the signing of Executive Order ninety

19:19

sixty six and the mass incarceration

19:21

of Japanese Americans from the West coast

19:24

of the United States. Almost two

19:26

thirds of the people who were incarcerated

19:28

under that executive order were also

19:31

American citizens. Fights

19:33

between service members and Mexican

19:35

civilian use became increasingly

19:38

common in late nineteen forty two. In

19:40

December, they were reported at a rate of

19:43

about one per week. By the

19:45

spring of nineteen forty three, that had increased

19:47

to between two and three fights per

19:49

day. Each fight became

19:52

justification for the next one, and

19:54

sometimes they erupted into mass

19:56

violence. It's not totally

19:58

clear what caused these ongoing

20:01

clashes between service members

20:03

and civilians of Mexican descent to

20:05

escalate into mass violence. According

20:08

to a number of sources, it was a fight between

20:10

eleven sailors and a group of zoot

20:12

suitors on May thirtieth, nineteen forty

20:14

three, which left one sailor with a broken

20:17

jaw. These riots started

20:19

on June third and were at least in

20:21

theory in retaliation for that

20:24

earlier fight. And we're going to get into

20:26

the details of the zootsuit riots after

20:28

we first pause for a break where

20:30

we hear from one of the sponsors that keeps his show

20:32

going.

20:41

On June third, nineteen forty

20:44

three, a group of about fifty sailors

20:46

left the Naval and Marine Corps Reserve Center

20:48

in Schabzravine. They were armed

20:51

with makeshift weapons, and they made their way

20:53

through the neighborhoods near the armory looking

20:55

for a fight. They specifically

20:58

looked for and attacked anyone

21:00

wearing a zoot suit. This was

21:02

the first night of the zoot suit riots.

21:05

June fourth was a Friday, and that

21:07

evening, sailors began hiring

21:10

cabs to take them into the barrios. They

21:12

treated this like a seek and destroy mission,

21:15

seeking out and beating Mexican youth,

21:17

especially the ones in zootsuits,

21:19

but they also attacked people who were

21:21

not in zoot suits. Five

21:23

victims were hospitalized. Most

21:26

of the sailors had returned to base by the time

21:28

shore patrol and the police arrived, and

21:30

there were only a few arrests, and those

21:32

were mainly Mexican victims.

21:35

On June fifth, the scene was much

21:37

the same, with the riots spreading further

21:39

into East Los Angeles. The attacks

21:42

targeted men, especially the ones who

21:44

quote looked like Pachuco's. This

21:46

included a group of musicians who were leaving

21:48

Aztec Recording Company. On

21:51

June seventh, news reports spread

21:53

that zoot suitors were planning a coordinated

21:55

effort to kill police. Based

21:58

on what evidence, we have no idea. It

22:00

was kind of just a rumor as far as we know. Yeah,

22:03

we don't know why that was being reported as

22:05

though it was a real thing. That's the question

22:07

of a lot of the reporting that happened with

22:10

this, and in response, thousands

22:12

of servicemen came to downtown Los Angeles,

22:15

some of them from as far away as San Diego.

22:18

Cab drivers offered the servicemen free

22:20

rides, and they attacked people not

22:22

only in Mexican neighborhoods, but also

22:25

in the predominantly black neighborhood of

22:27

Watts. June seventh was really

22:29

the peak of the zootsuit riots, and

22:31

throughout this sort of war, servicemen

22:34

attacked and beat up young men in zoot suits.

22:36

They were often armed with things like clubs

22:39

and tire irons. In some cases,

22:41

they stripped their victims down to their

22:43

underwear in the streets and then

22:45

sometimes set fire to their zoot

22:47

suits in front of them. Sometimes

22:50

the soldiers cut off their target's hair. They

22:53

also invaded people's homes, and they

22:55

stormed movie theaters to drag Mexican

22:57

and other minority patrons out into the

22:59

street and attack them. While

23:02

there were definitely cases of Mexicans

23:04

and other minorities fighting back or

23:07

like taunting the sailors,

23:10

like being generally aggressive, this was

23:12

not a case of two factions

23:15

coming together and fighting. The servicemen

23:18

were definitely the instigators here, and

23:20

law enforcement did little to intervene

23:23

In all of this, officers often

23:25

arrived on the scene after the violence was

23:27

over and then arrested the victims

23:29

instead of the perpetrators, purportedly

23:32

for their own protection. Servicemen

23:35

who were picked up by law enforcement were typically

23:37

taken back to base or just taken a few

23:39

blocks away from the violence and dropped

23:41

off and otherwise faced no

23:44

consequences. There were also

23:46

reports of young Mexican American men

23:48

turning themselves into police stations

23:51

and asking to be taken into custody

23:53

rather than face being the victims of violence

23:56

in their own neighborhoods. Throughout

23:58

all of this, news reports generally praised

24:00

the servicemen as carrying out a

24:02

much needed vigilante war against

24:05

uncontrollable Mexican delinquents.

24:08

The Los Angeles Times read headlines

24:10

like zo suitors learn lesson

24:13

in fight with servicemen. Here's

24:15

how The New York Times kicked off its reporting

24:17

on June seventh, quote subdued

24:20

and no longer ready to do battle. Twenty

24:23

eight zoot suitors stripped of their gears,

24:25

clothing, and with County jail barbers

24:27

hopefully eyeing their flowing ductail

24:30

haircuts, languished behind

24:32

bars today after a second night of

24:34

battle with flears and servicemen,

24:37

and the next paragraph the article acknowledges

24:39

that this was quote a war declared

24:42

by servicemen. First Lady Eleanor

24:44

Roosevelt wrote about the riots in

24:46

her mind Day column, saying, quote,

24:49

the question goes deeper than just suits.

24:51

It is a racial protest. I

24:53

have been worried for a long time about

24:55

the Mexican racial situation. It

24:58

is a problem with roots going along way

25:00

back, and we do not always face these problems

25:03

as we should. After this

25:05

appeared, the La Times accused her of

25:07

sowing racial discord. On

25:09

June eighth, the violence largely

25:12

stopped because the servicemen

25:14

were barred from leaving base, and downtown

25:17

Los Angeles was made out of bounds

25:19

for soldiers and sailors. At the

25:21

same time, the official Navy position

25:24

was that all of the actions

25:26

by sailors were in self defense.

25:29

That was patently false. They

25:31

were picking the fights themselves.

25:34

The Shore Patrol was also given orders

25:37

to arrest any member of the military

25:39

whose behavior was disorderly. On

25:41

the ninth, the Los Angeles City Council

25:44

passed a resolution banning the public

25:46

wearing of zoot suits, with fifty

25:48

days in jail as punishment. Although

25:51

there had been hundreds of injuries,

25:53

some of them severe, There were no deaths

25:56

during the zoot Suit riots, but the

25:58

racial aspect of the violences off obvious by

26:00

the numbers. In terms

26:02

of hospitalizations, about

26:04

one hundred Mexican Americans suffered

26:07

serious injuries compared to

26:09

roughly sixteen servicemen. There

26:11

also would have been lots and lots of people who

26:13

were hurt but didn't seek medical care. There

26:16

were also arrests of close to

26:18

one hundred Mexican Americans compared

26:20

to about twenty servicemen and about

26:23

thirty non Hispanic civilians.

26:25

After this was over, two committees

26:28

were formed to investigate and find out

26:30

the cause of the riots. One

26:32

was a Citizens Committee ordered by California

26:34

Governor Earl Warren. The other

26:37

was an Anti American Activities investigation

26:40

presided over by State Senator Jack

26:42

B. Tenney, which looked for fascist

26:44

and Nazi instigators. No

26:46

evidence was ever found or published to back

26:49

up the whole fascist slash Nazi

26:51

angle, but the Citizens Committee

26:53

report was clear quote in undertaking

26:56

to deal with the cause of these outbreaks, the existence

26:58

of race prejudice can not be ignored

27:01

In response, to this. Los Angeles Mayor Fletcher

27:03

Boren, on the other hand, maintained that race

27:06

was not a factor and continued to blame

27:08

the riots on the zoot seaters and on juvenile

27:11

delinquents. The Citizens Committee

27:13

report outlined some of the social conditions

27:15

that had led to all of this quote

27:18

there are approximately two hundred and fifty

27:20

thousand persons of Mexican descent

27:22

in Los Angeles County. Living

27:25

conditions among the majority of these people

27:27

are far below the general level of

27:29

the community. Housing is

27:31

inadequate, Sanitation is bad

27:33

and is made worse by congestion. Recreational

27:36

facilities for children are very poor,

27:39

and there is insufficient supervision of

27:41

the playgrounds, swimming pools, and other

27:43

youth centers. Such conditions

27:46

are breeding places for juvenile delinquency.

27:49

The report also addressed the

27:51

basically ubiquitous idea

27:53

that there was an epidemic of

27:56

juvenile delinquency, specifically

27:58

among Mexican youths. All

28:01

juvenile delinquency has increased

28:03

recently in Los Angeles. This

28:06

includes crimes committed by youths

28:08

of Mexican origin. But the fact

28:10

is that the increase of delinquency

28:13

in the case of youths of Mexican families

28:15

has been less than in the case

28:17

of other national or racial groups,

28:20

and less than the average increase

28:22

for the community. The committee also

28:25

made a number of recommendations to try to

28:27

address the root causes of delinquency

28:29

and gang formation, better

28:31

training for police officers who were working

28:33

in multi racial communities, better

28:36

and more widely available youth and recreation

28:38

facilities in Mexican neighborhoods,

28:41

an end to discrimination and

28:43

segregation at public facilities.

28:46

What the committee really did not investigate,

28:48

though, was the actions of the Anglo

28:51

servicemen and any Anglo civilians

28:53

who had participated in these riots.

28:56

It didn't touch on the fact that

28:58

large numbers of servicemen were leaving

29:00

their bases during an actual

29:03

war, that being World War Two, to

29:05

go and attack civilians. So

29:07

even though the report included an acknowledgment

29:10

of racism as a factor in all of this,

29:12

and even though it included a lot of common

29:15

sense recommendations that could help the

29:17

Mexican community in Los Angeles, it

29:19

really did not touch on anything

29:21

that could have addressed the servicemen's

29:23

decision to stage a vigilante

29:26

attack on Los Angeles's Mexican

29:28

community. There was a whole lot

29:30

of this is what we should do to prevent delinquency

29:33

among Mexican youth, but virtually

29:36

no, this is what we should do to prevent

29:38

servicemen from forming a racist

29:40

vigilante mob. This whole

29:42

incident was really formative

29:44

in both the Hispanic and the Anglo communities.

29:48

It was a national news story, and for

29:50

a lot of people who didn't live in the Southwest,

29:52

it was the first time that they really heard

29:54

about a significant Mexican minority

29:57

living in the United States, which

29:59

makes it particular ularly unfortunate that much

30:01

of the news reporting was handled in

30:03

such a racist way with the

30:05

Hispanic and Latino community. The Sleepy

30:08

Hollow murder case and the zoot Suit riots

30:10

were both precursors to the Ticano

30:12

movement, also called the Mexican American

30:14

Civil rights movement. We've talked

30:17

about some of the other events that were also part

30:19

of the development of this movement, including

30:21

Mendes versus Westminster, which was a

30:23

school segregation case, and the

30:25

case of Macario Garcia, who was the

30:27

first Mexican national to be awarded

30:29

the Medal of Honor, who was arrested

30:31

after being denied service at a restaurant

30:33

after returning home. There

30:36

were also similar incidents in other

30:38

cities after the zoot Suit riots, although

30:40

not as massive or as widely reported

30:42

as what took place in Los Angeles, and

30:45

it could have become an international incident

30:48

since most of the people targeted were not Mexican

30:50

nationals, and because this happened during World

30:52

War II, Mexico's diplomatic

30:55

response was somewhat muted. There

30:58

was also a lot of other just mass

31:00

racist violence that happened that wasn't

31:03

necessarily similar to the Zootsuit Riots,

31:05

but did follow in the immediate months

31:07

and years after this. It's

31:09

also a whole other topic, but worth mentioning.

31:12

Chavez Ravine was emptied through

31:14

a series of evictions starting in nineteen

31:16

forty nine, so just a few years after this, with

31:19

the city originally saying that it was

31:21

going to be redeveloped and that the evicted

31:23

residents would get the first choice of

31:26

the newly built homes instead.

31:28

It's now the site of Dodger Stadium. There

31:31

is also a Broadway play called zoot Suit,

31:33

directed by Louis Miguel Valdez that

31:35

debuted in nineteen seventy nine, and it was

31:38

the first play with a Chicano director on Broadway

31:40

that has also been made into a film. And

31:43

there's also that song by the Cherry Pop and Daddy's

31:45

which we're only mentioning so that everyone will know

31:47

that, yes, we do know that it exists,

31:54

and yeah, makes it sound like a

31:56

whole lot of fun when it was not. It was not fun

31:59

at all.

32:05

Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday.

32:08

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32:10

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32:29

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