Animator Tex Avery's Big Bad Woolf in a zoot suit--a lecherous predator of Red Riding Hood.
The mention of zoot suits these days conjures up fuzzy, even nostalgic
memories—the ogling, lecherous
Big Bad Wolf in Tex Avery’s
classic Red Riding Hood cartoons;
clips from old black and white Big Band movies with Lindy Hop and Jitterbug dancers; even teenage Dodie Steven’s already anachronistic 1959 hit Tan Shoes and Pink Shoelaces. But in the midst of World War II the flamboyant
outfits had become youth culture
symbols especially popular in minority communities from
coast to coast and were widely viewed as flagrant defiance of war
time austerity and patriotic rationing.
In 1943 they became the flashpoint of days of rioting as Marines and Sailors roamed the streets of Los
Angeles assaulting zoot suiters—mostly
Mexican youth—with the open
encouragement of the city’s newspapers
and the abetted by the LAPD’s notorious vigilante Vengeance Squad.
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Zoot suits spread from Harlem and other East Coast Black centers with the assistance of Big Band hep cats like Cab Calloway. The zoot suit arose out of the Big
Band Jazz scene and among vipers—marijuana users (think Cab Calloway)—in the late 1930’s as a mark of defiance to the squares. Like many trends on the cutting edge of culture it probably started
in Eastern Black communities
but quickly spread. By 1940 the outfits
had become especially popular with California’s Mexican Pachucos, youth who flaunted
their flashy, expensive outfits and enjoyed a wild night life of partying and clubbing. The term
originated in El Paso,
Texas and was brought to the Los Angeles area with the huge migration of Mexican-Americans—Chicanos—and Mexican immigrants to the area during the Depression which accelerated with the
availability of war production jobs. Pachucos
and their female equivalent, Pachucas, who sometimes cross dressed in zoot suits,
formed street gangs and became linked in the public mind with crime.
Zoot suits featured a long coat tailored at the waist and billowing pleated pants pegged
at the ankles. Accessories included broad brimmed, low crowned hats with wide bands,
brightly colored ties, pointed toe shoes
with stacked heels and thick soles, and long watch chains. No question
about it, they were eye catching.
In 1942 in order to conserve wool for uniforms, the War
Production Board issued strict
regulations on how much material could be used in men’s suits. The regulations meant to
reduce wool use in suits by 26% and encouraged “new streamlined suits by Uncle
Sam.” They affected the voluminous pants and suit coats favored as pre-war business attire, but also effectively outlawed zoot suits. Major
manufacturers quickly complied and ended their production of the style.
But in California small tailor shops continued to supply the
demand in apparent defiance of
the regulations. Young Latinos with money to spend from war
jobs continued to buy the expensive suits.
And, of course, many had zoot suits produced before the
restrictions. The press railed against the unpatriotic defiance
and spared no racial insults in singling out the
Mexican community adding allegations of being slackers despite the
fact that a much higher than average
percentage of young men in the community were in the armed services and their workers were essential
to war production.
An
L.A. Pachuco zoot suiter and a fashionable Pachuca.
Tensions were further heightened
by sensational press reports of Pachuco gang activity and street crime. In one sensational case nine young gang
members were accused of a murder
in which the victim’s body was found in a dump. Off-duty police acting as the
Vengeance Squad began sweeps of the East
LA barrio and popular night spots all over the city targeting zoot suit
wearing suspected gang members for assault and summary punishment.
All over California tensions also
rose between service men and zoot suiters because of the
alleged lack of patriotism for defying rationing. But typical
conflicts between soldiers, sailors, and Marines and locals over women added fuel to the
fire. Attractive young Pachucas in sexy dresses, gowns, and their own versions of zoot suits were out on the
streets frequenting night clubs,
dance halls, and theaters. They were often approached and harassed by groups of servicemen. Many fights
resulted.
On May 30 a large group of sailors
began hassling a group of young women and were attacked by zoot suit wearing
men. In the melee that resulted one
sailor suffered serious injuries
and several others were badly roughed up.
On the evening of June 3, 1943 11
sailors in Downtown Los
Angeles got into a confrontation
with a band of Pachucos and were beaten.
Once again the police Vengeance Squad swung into action in the word of
the Los
Angeles Times breathless reporting, “seeking to clean up Main Street from what they viewed as the loathsome influence of Pachuco gangs.”
Hundreds of sailors rampaged against zoot suiters or any young Mexicans
or Chicanos they could find, but as this picture shows they were joined
by Army Air Corps men, Marines, and White civilian thugs.
The next day, with the apparent
winking approval of base authorities, more than 200 sailors piled into taxis to invade East LA. Their first victims were a group of 13 and 14
year olds, some of them wearing zoot suits who they attacked and beat.
Those in zoot suits were stripped
and their clothes burned on the streets. Adults of
both sexes in the neighborhood who tried to come to the boys’ defense were
likewise attacked. The sailors moved on
to other targets, invading movie
theaters, forcing the management
to turn up the house lights, and dragging zoot
suiters and other young men to the stage where they were stripped, beaten, and
their clothes and bodies urinated on. Night clubs were invaded. Men were pulled from
busses. And not just Mexicans—Filipinos, Blacks, and anyone with a
dark complexion.
Zoot suiters were attacked, beaten, and publicly stripped as police looked on or actively participated.
As word spread hundreds more Sailors
and large numbers of even more aggressive Marines converged on the city
and on barrios from San Diego to San Jose. Mobs
marched down streets accompanied and escorted
by police who not only did not interfere but often participated. No young Latin with or without a zoot suit
was safe from attack. Pachucas were especially targeted and many were sexually assaulted. When
one young woman was arrested in possession of brass knuckles the
press reacted hysterically.
Rioting continued for days and
spread across Southern California. The
press, especially the Times applauded the rampaging sailors and
Marines, spared no racial animus toward Mexicans, and generally threw gasoline on a
roaring fire.
Pachucas were swept up by police out of dance halls and movie theaters,
dragged off of buses just for their style. But the gangs of service men
also sexually assaulted many which fueled Pachuco resistance and
escalated the violence.
Navy
Brass was slow to react. They continued to issue passes in large
numbers during the first days of the disturbances and maintained that their
personnel were merely defending
themselves. The Shore Patrol (SP)
was conspicuous for its absence on the streets in the heart of the riot zones. Finally late on June 7, after the reeling
Pachuco gangs rallied to
organize resistance to the
attacks and injuries to sailors and Marines began to climb, the Brass
acted. They cancelled all shore leave and confined men to their bases and ships. The SP was finally
dispatched in numbers with orders to retrieve
service members on the scene. None were ever charged by the
service for any offences committed during the riot. In fact, rumors later swirled that the
Marines quickly promoted men who
were reported to have shown “leadership ability under stress” during the
fighting.
The Los Angeles City Council passed a resolution condemning “pleated
pants” as gang apparel in much the same way later municipal bodies would try to ban gang colors or drooping
pants. Despite the ballyhoo no actual ordinance banning zoot suits was adopted.
Many of the young men swept up by police remained cheerily defiant enraging White public opinion.
By mid-June rioting and fighting
died down in L.A. Official reports indicate that more than 150 were injured badly enough to seek
treatment and police had arrested
more than 500 Latinos on charges ranging from rioting to vagrancy
in the city alone. Although the figures
for the injured are probably grossly under reported, there were no known deaths during the
disturbances due largely to the fact that neither the service men nor Pachuco
gangs used firearms.
As things died down in
California, copycat anti-zoot
suit rioting spread across the country to cities in Texas and Arizona where Chicanos were targeted to
Northern cities such as Detroit, New
York City, and Philadelphia, where Blacks were often
singled out. But even White hipsters were not immune.
Two members of Gene Krupa’s
big band were beaten up for wearing the band’s stage costumes. In Harlem a young zoot suit street hustler named Malcolm Little—the future Malcolm X—was caught up in fighting.
In Harlem a young street hustler named Malcolm Little was caught up in attacks on zoot suiters.
The Federal Government, which
was trying to shore up relations with Latin America to counter Nazi activity there, became alarmed when the Mexican government vigorously
protested the abuse of its nationals and warned of possible severe
diplomatic consequences. The
government was particularly concerned that Mexico might cut off the supply of bracero migrant farm workers who had
become absolutely essential in bringing in the nation’s crops as
traditional Anglo migrant workers
joined the military or flocked to cities for big paying defense jobs.
Under Federal pressure California Governor Earl Warren ordered the creation of the McGucken
Committee to investigate
and determine the cause of the riots. Its 1943 report found racism to be a central cause and blamed the press for aggravating the situation
by emphasizing zoot suits in any report of Latino crime. In response he appointed the Peace Officers Committee on Civil
Disturbances, chaired by Robert W.
Kenny, President of the National Lawyers Guild to make recommendations to the police. In a tradition of post-riot soul searching familiar to us today, human relations commissions were established,
and Police Departments were instructed to
institute training on treating all residents equally. You can draw your own conclusions about how effective that was.
But not everyone was on the same
page. L.A. Mayor Fletcher Bowron angrily dismissed the McGucken Committee
conclusion of racism. The fault for the
riots, he maintained laid with the criminal culture of the Pachucos and zoot
suiters on one hand sailors and Marines led by White Southerners, who came out of a region in with both overt legal and socially sanctioned racial discrimination. It was just a clash of
cultures, he maintained,
with the good [White] citizens of the city, including the
police, caught in the middle.
Anecdotal evidence does show that Southerners may have played
leading roles in the violence, but it is clear that White sailors and Marines
from all parts of the country were involved.
Also arriving in Los Angeles to cash in on the situation was California Un-American Activities Committee
under State Senator Jack Tenney
which declared that it had evidence
that Nazi saboteurs were behind the
riots. That evidence was never produced and the
Committee did not even hold hearings. Yet wide-spread
publicity around the claim made sure that many Californians were convinced
it was true.
The Los Angeles Times did everything in its power to
inflame the riots as they continued, kept stoking racial animosity in
every way possible throughout the War, and savagely attacked Eleanor
Roosevelt for expressing concern and sympathy with the victims.
Eleanor Roosevelt in one of her My Day newspaper columns wrote “The question goes deeper than just 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.”
The Times, owned by the rabidly anti-Roosevelt Chandler family, erupted with
predictable furry. It repeated the
accusations of Nazi sabotage by the zoot suiters and it accused Mrs. Roosevelt
of having “Communist leanings
and stirring race discord.”
Although the Zoot Suit Riots have been nearly obliterated from history for White
Americans, for Chicanos and other Latinos they represent a critical cultural moment and are in enshrined in their collective memory.
