Background/Content
Zoot Suit Riots, 5 Days of Violence
In June 1943 the United States home front was marked by race-based violence. Riots in both Harlem and Detroit that summer resulted in injuries and fatalities. On the night of June 3rd, "a band of 50 sailors armed themselves with makeshift weapons, left their naval base, and coursed into downtown Los Angeles in search of young Mexican Americans in zoot suits." The group of sailors was largely if not entirely white. The purpose of their downtown visit was not centered on making friends. On the contrary, the sailors were intent on violence. Sailors searched out young men in zoot suits, beating them severely, stripping them of their pants, tearing their jackets, and in some cases cutting their hair. Sailors swarmed nightclubs and movie theaters, notably sites of consumption, and forced owners to turn on the lights. This made it easy for sailors to identify their victims. 3 Though some of the victims were African American, most of those targeted were Mexican Americans in zoots, or pachucos.
The violence got worse over the next few days, with hundreds of sailors organizing taxi convoys into East Los Angeles to hunt down and attack pachucos. Some pachucos retreated while others fought back and even searched out the sailors to confront them. Violence and confrontation increased from there. By June 7, 5,000 people packed the streets of downtown Los Angeles hoping to be involved in the action after reading and hearing sensationalist media coverage, which often blamed Mexican American youth for the violence. Over the next few days, white civilians joined the servicemen in attacking the pachucos. Police, afraid of a full-on riot, began to arrest Mexican American youth by the hundreds, blaming them for the violence. However, the major fighting and violence did not stop until the Navy declared Los Angeles off-limits for servicemen on July 8, 1943. 4
Zoot Suit Fashion
Why the Zoot Suit? Why the pachuco? In order to answer those questions, one must understand the zoot fashion itself. Zoot Suits were popular in the 1930s and 1940s as a set of extravagant clothing worn by men and, in some cases, women. The style was also known as "the drape," and the "drape shape." 5 The suit was an exaggeration or distortion of the masculine business suit, which displayed varying degrees of flamboyance and extravagance. 6 All variations, however, included common attributes. The first was a long jacket ranging anywhere from just below the hips to all the way to the knees. Jackets were wide at the shoulders and pinched in at the waist, "draping" back out over the hips and legs toward the knees. The pants of the zoot suit were high waisted, reaching up and fastening just under the ribs. The knees of the pants billowed out, sometimes even larger than a 25-inch diameter. The cuffs of the pants, however, were pegged, often at 12 or 14 inches, giving the slacks an intense ballooning effect, which could not be ignored. 7 The pants of a zoot suit were not complete without the signature reet pleat, which was deep and obvious as it ran down the front of the pant-leg.
The style of the zoot did not stop with the cut of the clothing. Bright teal, yellow, red, green, and blue were seen often, and sometimes in combination. The more extreme the color, the more "zoot" the suit. A large-collared, brightly colored shirt was worn under the coat, and a long pocket chain, stretching out below the already long coat, was not uncommon. The zoot was an evolutionary style, increasing in flamboyance and accessories. Cowboy hats, for example, were commonly worn with zoot suits in Detroit. The most extravagant zooters wore large, wide-brim pancake hats as the icing on the cake. Highly-polished shoes, sometimes two-toned, were worn with the suit. The shoes were emblematic of the style of zooters; there was absolutely no room for anything less than perfection.
The precise origin of the zoot suit remains unclear, but it emerged in African American communities, particularly that of Harlem, in the 1930s. 8 Though several clothiers claimed to have invented the suit, the extreme growth of the style seems to have sprung from an interplay between demand by patrons and response by clothiers.
The spread came with a popularization of the suit in Hollywood films, zoot suited performances by jazz greats such as Duke Ellington and Cab Calloway in dance halls, and eventually advertisements in popular magazines like Life and Esquire. To a greater extent, however, the spread of the zoot style caught fire with the boom of the war industry in the late 1930s and early 1940s. As people migrated to cities to participate in war-industry work for higher wages, and as rationing on goods, including wool, swept the country, the style caught on and was sent home in photographs and accounts to families in other parts of the country. 9 The zoot suit was especially popular at the dance halls, where the pegged pants were well-suited to the fast flying movements of the jitterbug and other innovative dance steps. 10 In urban dance halls, historian Robin D.G. Kelley has argued, the dance steps and the zoot suit symbolized a people taking back control of their bodies from racist whites or from their bosses in the workplace. 11 Less important than the question of who invented the zoot suit is the question of who wore it, why, and where.
Race
The zoot suit did not just mark an attitude of freedom, especially under conditions of wartime rationing, but it also implied race. People who wore the suits were defined by them, often called "drapes," "zooters," "sharpies," or, in the case of Los Angeles Mexican Americans, pachucos or pachucas. Though the zoot was a style worn by African American men in large cities in the 1930s, the style quickly spread throughout the nation and to other ethnic minority groups. In Los Angeles particularly, Mexican American, and to a lesser extent Filipino and Japanese American youth began to don the suit. Later Jewish and some white youth picked up the style. After working long hours, war industry workers were hungry for leisure – this particularly applied to those who worked the late shift. Dance halls generally segregated whites from non-whites, but African American, Mexican American, Filipino, and Japanese American war workers mixed there. They ventured out to the dance halls where fast swing was alive (hence the term, "swing" shift) and mingled interracially, sharing style and fun. 12 By 1940, the style had spread across all the aforementioned ethnic minorities.
An important distinction in the case of Mexican American pachucos is that they were second-generation. Though their parents were not, these youth were born in the United States, which made their experience unique. Much like the older generation of African Americans, Mexican parents disapproved of the zoot suit style and attitude. In addition to the style and attitude of the zoot, pachucos and pachucas spoke caló, a hybrid slang. 13 In their active exaggeration of mainstream American style, these second-generation Mexican American pachucos defied the racialized class structure by defining their own identities, actively removing this power of labeling from white and middle-class Americans. In a social structure that historically privileged whites, this consumerist gesture was a source of fear and conflict for whites.
African Americans experienced a similar symbolism. As Kelley states in his book, Race Rebels, "In a world where clothes constituted signifiers of identity and status, 'dressing up' was a way of escaping the degradation of work and collapsing status distinctions between themselves and their oppressors." 14 The zoot suit, then, was an act of cultural politics that encouraged social politics of erasing the differences between races. Wartime rationing, which insisted that Americans limit their consumption, only intensified the perceived threat caused by the blurring of status boundaries. In the midst of World War II, this was particularly significant as racial stratification was being reiterated in the realms of training opportunities, hiring opportunities, promotion opportunities, workplace segregation, decreased pay, and housing and restrictive covenants, to cite a few areas. 15
Class
The suit was a marker of class as well as race. The zoot suit was sharp, always pressed, always clean, and never frumpy. The zoot was expensive, and most often tailor-made. Some zooters, for example a young Malcolm X, paid for the suits on installment plans. 16 However, the zoot suit was not a middle-class style. In respect to Mexican Americans in Los Angeles, zoot suits were only worn by working-class youth, as noted by Cesar Chavez. "People that wore them eran los mas pobres [were the poorest], the guys like us who were migrant farm workers." 17
Though those wearing it were working-class, the zoot suit was a symbol of status. "By flaunting their disposable incomes, pachucos and pachucas underscored the instability of class and race categories. Via their expensive clothing, they demonstrated that Mexican Americans could and could climb the socioeconomic ladder." 18 The fact that zooters wore the suit in leisure-based arenas like the dance hall was often incorrectly perceived as zooters having the financial resources to avoid work, a perception that radically challenged the race-based class structure of the country. In the case of Mexican American pachucos, the zoot suit signified the possibility of class mobility, a concept that was not welcomed by most whites. Of course, the fact that zooters worked (sometimes multiple jobs) and saved for months to afford a zoot suit remained invisible to outsiders. 19
Gender and the Pachuca
In the era of the zoot suit, women were not just the dance partners of male zoot suiters. Mexican American women in particular were involved in their own exaggeration and distortion of popular mainstream style. While men altered the business suit, Mexican American pachucas in Los Angeles were distorting the look of famous female movie stars of the time. The pachuca style included the pencil-thin eyebrows, dark lipstick, and "rats," or high bouffant up-dos, jewelry, and flowers in their hair. At the same time, pachucas took bits of the male style such as broad-shouldered coats, and even draped slacks altered for women with two-toned shoes huaraches or "zombie slippers." Others wore tight sweaters, short, full skirts above the knee, and long bobby socks. Some even dressed exactly like pachucos in a full zoot suit. Like men, the pachuca style was all about spectacle, leisure, and amplification of a mainstream style. 20
The male pachucos were posited as feminine "dandies" by the press Male participation in the consumer culture itself was seen as feminine, especially in wartime. 21 Despite the overt masculine characteristics of the broad-shouldered suit, long coats were likened to skirts, draped pants were compared to a woman's girdle, and the zooter's silhouette was called feminine. Pachucos were considered sexual deviants and "pathologized as 'sexual[ly[ perverse' and 'queer.'" During the riots, sailors' stripping pachucos of their zoot suits was later analyzed by Mauricio Mazon as a symbolic castration that matched the de-personalization sailors experienced in basic training. 22
Pachucas and Sexuality
In a time of war when large numbers of women were entering the defense industry, the mainstream expectation of "feminine" was deeply linked with patriotism. It was not uncommon to see women in coveralls or another masculine uniform at work. Though women were still expected to have their hair "perfectly coiffed" and their makeup impeccably applied, there was a certain "androgynous nature" to the media depictions of the patriotic woman. Rosie the Riveter (as represented in her kerchief and coveralls in Norman Rockwell's famous painting) and the defense industry women she represented were expected to have a very particular balance between their masculine jobs and their feminine faces. If a woman did not display her femininity as expected, she had to deal with the repercussions of homophobia; if she displayed her femininity too much, she was considered a whore and a potentially seditious threat. 23 Pachucas fell into both categories. Some wore partial or entire zoot suits in the male style – this group included out-lesbians as well as heterosexual women.
Other pachucas were entirely too feminine to suit the mainstream press or the older generation. They wore their sexuality on the sleeves of their tight sweaters. Los Angeles newspapers "described the pachucas' hair, makeup, and clothing in vivid detail," which heightened awareness and disapproval of the style. 24 Short black skirts, scandalously painted eyes and lips, and high, teased bouffants filled with products were just some of the attributes that both the mainstream and the older generation read as a representation of "filth and excess." 25 Even though there were white women known as Victory Girls or "v-girls," "free girls" or "khaki-wackies," who were criticized for having sexual intercourse with servicemen as a sort of distorted patriotic duty (this was not prostitution; no money was exchanged), it was pachucas who were deemed sexually deviant, "morally suspect," and unclean. In fact, both pachucas and pachucos alike were seen as wildly sexual. The press perpetuated rumors such as pachucas hiding knives in their hair and plotting to seduce then kill servicemen, which augmented the notion that they were delinquent, and that their delinquency was tied to sexuality. Often these pachucas were said to be involved in female gangs like the "Black Widows." 26
The War Industry and Migration
It is important to situate the Zoot Suit Era politics in the context of the United States' participation in World War II, both in production and actual military participation. Though the zoot suit increased in popularity throughout the 1930s, the early 1940s were its heyday. The Zoot Suit Riots themselves exploded at a time (1943) and space (Los Angeles) deeply affected by U.S. participation in World War II.
The growth of the defense industry in Southern California spurred great demographic changes in Los Angeles as well as in many other areas of the country. In the 1930s during the Great Depression, Mexican workers were systematically "repatriated" to Mexico. In 1942 the institution of the Bracero Program, an agreement between the governments of the United States and Mexico, contracted Mexican workers to enter the United States to provide agricultural labor. A large number of these workers, called braceros, went to Los Angeles just as increasing numbers of Mexican Americans began to migrate there from the Southwest to enter the defense industry. Some 54,000 African Americans also migrated to Los Angeles to enter the defense industry at this time. 27 Simultaneously, Japanese Americans (nearly 37,000 from Los Angeles alone) were being forcibly removed from all over California to be interned through Executive Order 9066. The change in demographics, migration, and industry served to destabilize Los Angeles as people of all ethnic groups and of various levels of native association to the city tried to find or, in the case of white Angelinos, affirm their place in a rapidly growing Southern California. 28 As migrants poured in, racial tensions were exacerbated by conflicts over housing shortages and job competition as well as a volatile social climate set up by rationing, overcrowding, and long work weeks without recreation, to be discussed in the subsections below. 29
Discrimination/Civil Rights
Discrimination ran rampant in the United States in the early 1940s. African Americans, Mexican migrants, Mexican Americans, and Filipinos all suffered from employment discrimination, manifested in exclusion from government defense industry training programs, exclusion from employment based on skin color and language, and poor conditions and pay compared to whites. 30 In the unit, discrimination during this time period can be taught using stations that provide photographs or excerpts of individuals' experiences.
Segregation
Housing shortages and segregation aggravated racial discrimination against ethnic groups in the early 1940s. As migration to Los Angeles increased, a housing shortage evolved, and many landlords refused to rent to nonwhites. Likewise, restrictive covenants and quota restrictions eliminated the possibility for African Americans, Mexicans, and Mexican Americans to live anywhere other than segregated communities. When Mexicans and Mexican Americans did move into an area where whites lived, whites quickly moved out. Further, segregated areas did not grow rapidly enough to accommodate the increasing number of people who were filtered into the neighborhoods, causing crowding and competition. 31 In the politics of segregation, loud suits, zooters loitering on the sidewalks and, groups of pachucas and pachucos riding in cars effectively claimed social and physical space, which whites often read as insolence. 32
Mexican migrants had the worst housing problems in the country. Isolated in communities far from work, they felt the impact on their job training, employment, schools, and voter registration and participation?. They were relegated substandard housing and resource-poor schools where racism was common among teachers.
Filipinos, confined to Los Angeles' "Little Manila," had a similar experience of discrimination and segregation from whites. In the 1920s and '30s, it had been popular for Filipino men to go to dance halls and pay for a dance with a white woman. By the 1940s white fears of racial mixing led to a ban on Asian men in those dance halls. Filipinos joined African Americans and Mexican Americans in mixed-race (mixed nonwhite race, that is) dance halls called "black and tans," which became yet another space for the spreading and evolution of the zoot suit style. Just as for African American, Mexican American, and some Japanese American youth, the zoot suit was inextricably tied to a racially and ethnically marked consumer lifestyle. 33
Police Brutality
In the early 1940s, police brutality against ethnic minorities in general and against zoot suiters in particular ventured into the territory of "undeclared war… The youth were the victims of excessive police force in the form of beatings, harassment, frisking and searching, false arrests and insulting language." 34 Second-generation Mexican Americans had the experience of increased discrimination combined with increased exposure to American education, culture, and ideals. The Los Angeles Police Department had made no efforts to build a relationship with the Mexican immigrant community, and, much like today, the Spanish language a marked them as a target; Mexican residents kept the police at arms length. 35
In his semi-autobiographical novel, America is in the Heart(1946), Carlos Bulosan recounted the police brutality that Filipino men in Los Angeles experienced. "I was talking to a gambler when two police detectives darted into the place and shot a little Filipino in the back. The boy fell on his knees, face up, and expired." After the police looked at what they had done and left nonchalantly, Bulosan asked a nearby man why the boy was shot. "'They often shoot Pinoys like that,' he said. 'Without provocation. Sometimes when they have been drinking and they just want to have fun, they come to our district and kick or beat the first Filipino they meet.'" 36
Media Portrayal of Zoot Suiters
Police brutality, coupled with criminalizing media portrayal of Mexican Americans and zooters in general, set a tone of distrust and oppression in Los Angeles and other cities. Male and female zoot suiters were often seen as juvenile delinquents, accused of being part of violent zoot-suit-wearing gangs that spent their time committing petty and violent crimes, getting intoxicated, participating in group sex, and wreaking havoc around the cities. 37
In the years preceding the Zoot Suit Riots, articles about the zoot suits and the Los Angeles teens who wore them perpetuated stereotypes of juvenile delinquency. Completely ignoring systematic discrimination, newspapers such as the Herald Express, Examiner, and Los Angeles Times blamed the poverty of Mexicans and Mexican Americans on a long list of criminalizing accusations including "indolence, sex crimes, knifings, drugs, other gang-induced violence, and drugs." Meanwhile, radio repeated racial slurs positing Mexicans as "lazy, syphilitic, and tubercular." Sociologist Mauricio Mazón suggests that a set of divisive 'Lil Abner cartoons published in newspapers prior to the riots was perhaps the most provocative cause of the riots. Basically, 'Lil Abner haphazardly becomes a zoot-suit wearing hero (Zoot-Suit Yokum) at the behest of clothing manufacturers with the intention of becoming rich. Since Zoot-Suit Yokum can do no wrong after becoming a hero, the manufacturers hire criminals dressed in zoot suit disguises. When they are discovered, the zoot suit is forever destroyed. According to Mazón, the divisive hero/villain and patriotism/loyalty dichotomies, among others, were reenacted by the sailors. 38
Perhaps the most incendiary media event occurred the day before the start of the riots; Los Angeles newspapers reported that a group of zoot suiters had kidnapped and gang-raped two white women. The accusations of black and brown men raping white women had been common for generations; whites saw these accusations as confirmation that black and brown men were savage and dangerous. The story was old and familiar, but it was still an effective catalyst. The reports of the rape were followed by reports that Mexican American men in zoots "had 'insulted,' 'molested,' 'attacked,' or 'raped' white women – in particular sailors' wives or girlfriends." 39 This was followed by reports that quoted sailors who threatened to "'do what the police haven't been able to,'" or women who commented on the irony of being romantically involved with someone fighting for the country while they, themselves, were unable to safely walk the streets at home. Though some African American progressive papers refuted these accusations, they had relatively little influence on white mainstream America. 40
After the riots, an investigation was ordered by California Governor Earl Warren's Los Angeles Committee for American Unity; it found that the severity and number of the crimes committed by pachucos were unsubstantiated and had been wildly exaggerated by newspapers. Further, the report found that racist reporters had injected their bias into public discourse and created a climate that criminalized pachucos, which Anglos believed in and acted upon. The report also stated that the press incited conflict between Mexican American youth and GIs. 41
Juvenile Delinquency
During the war years, juvenile delinquency had been on the rise nationwide. The massive migration to urban-based defense industry hubs created instability as families moved and separated. 42 Segregation, inequality, and racism added to the instability, particularly for poor minority youth. Defense-industry hubs such as Los Angeles experienced shifts in racial populations, and the push to preserve segregation created tension as groups tried to shift within physical space to accommodate it's restrictions. Taken together, these factors were believed to have created? an environment ripe for the outbreak of juvenile delinquency that was haunting cities nationwide. 43
In the case of Mexican American zooters, the question of juvenile delinquency was influenced by their experience as second-generation immigrants. Second-generation Mexican Americans had a deeper connection to the United States through speaking English and going to school in the United States. At the same time, the daily discrimination they experienced marked them as outsiders. 44 Not fully Mexican or fully American, pachucos and pachucas were considered to be lost between two worlds, a circumstance that led some to crime and gang participation. Octavio Paz even went so far as to rename the pachuco generation the "lost generation." 45 However, it is vital to acknowledge that juvenile delinquency was not a defining characteristic of all zoot suit youth.
Psychologists took a particular interest in juvenile delinquency of the zoot suit era, both in the 1940s and since. In October 1943, Fritz Redl, an Austrian immigrant specializing in adolescent development described the zoot suit generation as fitting into one of four categories. The first included those who loved and dedicated themselves to the fast-paced swing dance styles associated with the suit. The second included those who wore the suit for the love of the independence of the style and of being seen. The third group included those who wore the suit "as a uniform of group identification, presenting themselves as tough young men in revolt against the adult world. Finally, the fourth group included those who "put on the zoot suit as a 'disguise for delinquent gang formation.'" 46 So, just as many of our youth today, zoot suiters had a variety of reasons for and identification with the suit.
Rationing & Patriotism
Ironically, it was the United States government itself that simultaneously created the pretext for deeming the zoot suit unpatriotic while inciting the most widespread interest in the style. In March 1942, the War Production Board (WPB), which had set rations and limitations on goods like sugar and butter, did the same for textiles. Particularly, the WPB set limitations on the use of wool in manufacturing men's and women's garments by removing cuffs, pleats, and pocket flaps as well as eliminating the vests, double-breasted jackets, and second pair of trousers that traditionally came with a new suit. 47 Zooters and clothiers got around the regulations by having suits made in linen and rayon. Clothiers created the "Victory Zoot," which included a single-breasted jacket and was creatively sewn to preserve the most important parts of the suit like the large shoulders, while altering aspects like the pleats. Consumers could still have a zoot suit without violating the mandated restrictions. 48
It October 1942, Frank Walton, director of the WPB's effort to restrict textile use once and for all; Walton regarded the wearing of the zoot to be wasteful at least, and wholly unpatriotic at most. 49 Restrictions on textiles extended to rayon, linen, and cotton, and particular zoot styles were banned. High-rise trousers, knee diameter, and ankle diameter, and jacket length were all restricted. 50 It is important to note that there was no ban on wearing the zoot suit, only on the manufacture and purchasing of the suit. Only in Los Angeles during the riots was there even a debate about banning the wearing of the suit by City Council, although the ordinance did not pass. 51 As far as the WPB restriction, there was no real consequence for consumers, and regulating manufacturers proved difficult. Officials called the zoot suit unpatriotic, and servicemen saw the wearing of the zoot as an outright affront to the United States government and to the wartime mandate to constrain consumption.
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