The Zoot Suit Riots (1943) took place in Los Angeles and lasted for about a week. It started out as fighting between White US servicemen and pachucos, Mexican Americans who wore zoot suits. But soon Mexican, Black and Filipino Americans were being beat up whether they wore zoot suits or not. And Whites, some of them off-duty policemen, were helping the servicemen. Amazingly, no one was killed.
Zoot suits had a long jacket, wide lapels and baggy trousers with tight cuffs (pictured below). They were sometimes worn with a long chain and a wide-brimmed hat. It was a Black American fashion that soon became a Mexican American one.
Pachucos were Mexican Americans who wore zoot suits, listened to jazz, had their own slang, hairstyles, dances and so on. Their female counterparts were pachucas. Like many youth subcultures, it offered them an oppositional identity counter to their (square Mexican) parents and the (racist Anglo American) mainstream.
The White press stereotyped pachucos as hoodlums, as part of a crime wave from Mexico.
Servicemen: Los Angeles by this time had tons of servicemen from all over the country, fresh out of boot camp, going off to fight Japan in the Second World War. On any given weekend, 50,000 were on the streets of LA. And the Navy had a base right in the middle of a Mexican neighbourhood. Fighting between White servicemen and Mexicans became a fact of life. And then it got worse:
On June 3rd sailors broke into the Carmen Theater and went after those wearing zoot suits, tearing off their suits and beating them up. The police did little, so with each passing night it got worse. What started out a just a few servicemen became hundreds then a thousand, roaming the streets and bars and cinemas looking for pachucos to beat up.
The police would arrive after an attack and arrest – the victims.
The press made the servicemen into heroes. It gave helpful instructions on how to tear off zoot suits and burn them. The Los Angeles Times ran headlines like this:
“Zoot Suit Chiefs Girding for War on Navy”
After a while you did not even have to be wearing a zoot suit – or even be Mexican. One Black man was pulled off a streetcar and had an eye gouged out with a knife.
The Mexican government protested to the US State Department.
Military authorities, with the permission of city government, stepped in and restored order. The next day the city outlawed the wearing of zoot suits on the street.
First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt:
“The question goes deeper than just [zoot] suits. It is a racial protest. I have been worried for a long time about the Mexican racial situation. It is a problem with roots going a long way back, and we do not always face these problems as we should.”
Or, as the Los Angeles Times put it:
“Mrs. Roosevelt Blindly Stirs Race Discord.”
– Abagond, 2016.
Thanks to stephaniegirl for suggesting this post.
See also:
- Welcome to Hispanic Heritage Month 2016
- Growing up Latino
- Why all the Black kids sit together
- Filipino Americans
- Anglo Americans
- Japanese American Internment – meanwhile…
529
Reblogged this on The Militant Negro™.
LikeLike
i learned about this one at my college class on classism and street gangs (an elective, but i’m considering urban studies for my masters), it’s quite interesting and you know considered ‘old school’ in the good old days of a street fight, fisticuffs, like.
LikeLike
I wonder who profited the most from the manufacture, wholesale distribution and retail sales of these zoot suits?? And the baseball bats white servicemen used as weapons??
The same can be asked of:
Police Corruption
Street Drugs
Alcohol
Guns/Weapons/Ammo
Terror
Human Trafficking
Surveillance
Drones
I’m seeing a pattern here!
LikeLike
“The police would arrive after an attack and arrest – the victims.
The press made the servicemen into heroes. It gave helpful instructions on how to tear off zoot suits and burn them.”
This is the America that Trump supporters think about when they talk about making America Great Again!
It is instructive to read about the role of the media in inciting increasing violence against Chicano, Black and Filipino youth.
I’m reminded of Malcolm X’s observation on the power of the press:
LikeLiked by 1 person
Great post enjoyed reading this
LikeLike
This is how Trump and his sycophants want to make America great again.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I can recall explaining the Zoot Suit riot to an antagonizing commenter of Mexican descent who said he was from L.A. (like myself). He was totally unaware of the Zoot Suit riot and too busy antagonizing the “Black riots” in L.A. (i.e., the riots of Watts and South-Central L.A.). After posting a link on the 1943 Zoot Suit Riot the Mexican-American commenter replied with a “Damn, I never knew my folks were involved in a riot with white dudes from the navy. I need to really study the history and relationship of the people in L.A. Thanks, bro!”
Malcolm X said it best: “History is best qualified to reward our research.”
@ Abagond
Thanks for posting the Zoot Suit riot. As a native of L.A., I love sharing and reading about my city’s history (good or bad) as well as the history of fellow Angelinos. Question: Have you heard of the Chinese massacre of 1871? Many people think that the infamous lynching of eleven Italians in New Orleans in 1891 was the largest lynching in America but it wasn’t. The largest lynching was here in Los Angeles with the Chinese. The Chinese massacre took place on a downtown street called Los Angeles Street formerly called Calle de los Negros (“Street of Negroes”), also referred to as “Nigger Alley.” Sadly, Chinese-Americans in L.A. don’t either know about this infamous history or don’t talk about it.
LikeLiked by 1 person
@ Michael Cooper
Go do a search in Abagond’s blog entry. He’s got a blog covering the riot. May a higher power praise Abagond.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Its blatantly obvious how this has come full circle….
Zootsuit>hoodie
What’s next?, a Tu Tu?
LikeLike
There’s always a constant. That constant is non-white skin and white intolerance thereof.
It may be cold comfort to ponder if some of the same sailors who engaged in such stateside barbarity were themselves killed in overseas action by an enemy that saw them as the dreaded “other”.
LikeLike
This part of history needs to be told because we’re living in a time of extremism from the right and no one in the mainstream media wants to cover those things.
Zoot Suit Riots were a combination of nativism, racism, classism, anti Black/Mexican ideology rolled in one.
SB
LikeLike
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDEfhS-r_68)
LikeLike
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwINn5DEL1c)
LikeLike
I’ve never seen a Zoot Suit before, I like them, Men back then dressed so smart.
The press is so powerful and so evil. Even now with social media so strong and information access at our finger tips it has the power to sway a whole Nation. People will choose not to see the truth if it doesn’t suit them, they will then use the lies of the press to further back up their own lies.
@Sondis, In my daughters school (Like many places here) Hoodies were banned… I’m like sh!t what am i gonna wear at the next parent/teacher conference!
LikeLike
Mary Burrell wrote:
“This is how Trump and his sycophants want to make America great again.”
Yep! This is how the right wing and other Republicans want to make the teaching of American history other than their official whitewashed version illegal in many states. It seems to me that those who deliberately destroying history are the ones that are repeating it.
Don’t forget it was the Republican party that created Trump and White supremacy in America. It’s 130 years in the making starting with the Compromise of 1877. Let’s not forget that.
S.B.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Reblogged this on Steph's Blog.
LikeLike
Links:
https://www.mtholyoke.edu/~campo22k/classweb/Zoot%20Suits/Zoot%20Suit%20Riots%20in%201943.html
http://www.tolerance.org/supplement/zoot-suit-riots
https://www.kcet.org/shows/lost-la/los-angeles-1943-war-on-the-zoot-suit
http://allday.com/post/3840-how-the-zoot-suit-riots-changed-race-relations-in-the-united-states-forever/
LikeLike
Never forget who you are? That’s my dads painting who gave you the right to use his work that way.
LikeLike
@ mesomocha
Removed. My apologies.
LikeLike
Oh wow nice post. There appears to always be something to target a group about.
LikeLike