Zoot Suit Riots

The “Zoot Suit Riots” occurred in Los Angeles from roughly June 3 to June 13, 1943. Although there were few reported serious injuries and property damage was minimal relative to other major twentieth-century civil disturbances, this event represents an especially violent episode in the history of race and racism in the United States.

During the Zoot Suit Riots, white servicemen, some of whom were accompanied by civilians, attacked “zooters,” or youths wearing zoot suits. In particular, they targeted zoot-clad Mexican Americans, who were sometimes known as pachucos and pachucas. For at least ten days, servicemen from across Southern California, and some from as far away as Las Vegas, Nevada, poured into Los Angeles and roamed the streets of downtown, Chinatown, Chavez Ravine, East Los Angeles, and Watts in search of their prey. In some instances, they stopped and boarded streetcars, burst into movie houses and private homes, and set upon people of color regardless of their attire. When they apprehended zooters, they sometimes sheared their hair and stripped them of their distinctive clothing. All the while, the police turned a blind eye to the rampaging servicemen but arrested zooters.

By 1943 the zoot suit had become a symbol of youthful rebellion, working-class style, racial difference, and even un-Americanism. With its excessive use of fabric, the masculine version of the zoot suit—which usually consisted of a long coat, billowing trousers that tapered at the ankle, a long watch chain that sometimes extended from the waist to the calves, a pair of thick-soled shoes, and in some instances, a broad-brimmed hat—represented an affront to wartime rationing measures. Female zooters often wore dark lipstick, a skirt that exposed the knees, and either a V-neck or cardigan sweater or a long coat similar to that of their male counterparts. Some wore the masculine version of the zoot suit. In addition, both female and male zooters wore their hair in a distinctive style. Many female zooters used foam inserts known as “rats” to lift their hair into a high bouffant, while their male counterparts often combed their hair in a pompadour on top and a ducktail in back. With his relatively long hair and flamboyant costume, the black or brown male zooter appeared to be the antithesis of the clean-cut and uniformed white serviceman. Female zooters, meanwhile, especially those who cross-dressed, defied conventional standards of feminine beauty and decency.

During World War II, the zoot look peaked in popularity in the United States among working-class youths of various races and ethnicities, many of whom were jazz and jitterbug aficionados. As they entered the wartime consumer-wage economy, these young men and women flaunted their new-found spending power on the street and in places of leisure, such as ballrooms, movie houses, and billiard halls. Across the Atlantic, French youths known as les zazous adopted a look similar to that of American zooters, and after World War II a variation of the zoot suit spread to youths in Britain.

Despite its widespread popularity, the zoot suit came to be associated in Los Angeles with racial minorities, especially Mexican Americans. Law enforcement and the mainstream press branded Mexican-American zooters juvenile delinquents in the wake of what became known as the Sleepy Lagoon incident. This event took place the night of August 1, 1942, and involved an alleged gang fight and murder at a swimming hole in Los Angeles. During the Grand Jury hearing that followed, Captain Edward Duran Ayres of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department argued that by virtue of their Aztec blood, Mexican Americans were intrinsically more violent than, and therefore biologically inferior to, white Americans. Ironically, as the United States combated Nazi eugenics and anti-Semitism abroad, the Ayres report blatantly espoused biological racism on the home front. Furthermore,

it equated Mexicans with “Orientals” and, by extension, the Japanese enemy. Like Japanese Americans, Mexican Americans exceeded the putative black-white binary of American racial identity. Bilingual and bicultural, many of these racial and cultural hybrids embodied an alien ambiguity during a period of heightened jingoism, xenophobia, and paranoia.

During the Sleepy Lagoon investigation and trial, Los Angeles’s dominant newspapers fomented anti-Mexican hysteria by publishing stories about violent, marijuana-addicted, sexually depraved, zoot-clad Mexican-American youths. In doing so, they rendered the zoot suit a hallmark of Mexican-American juvenile delinquency and sexual pathology. Angeleno newspapers continued to publish sensationalist stories about predatory pachucos and loose pachucas in the days and weeks prior to the Zoot Suit Riots. On the eve of the outbreak of violence, they reported that pachucos harassed and raped women, notably sailors’s wives and girlfriends.

The Zoot Suit Riots were the culmination of a series of altercations between pachucos, pachucas, and servicemen, many of whom were stationed in neighborhoods with high concentrations of Mexican Americans. As a contest over public space, the riots revealed a latent anxiety concerning Mexican Americans’s place on city streets and in the nation. Prior to World War II, Mexicans in the United States were a primarily immigrant, poor, rural, and relatively invisible population. However, the exigencies of war pulled them and their American-born children into a stratified urban proletariat. In their showy ensembles, second-generation pachucas and pachucos were especially conspicuous. Moreover, the riots expressed anxiety regarding the fluidity of gender and sexuality. As servicemen “depantsed” male zooters and cut their hair, they forced their victims to conform to a narrow definition of heterosexual and American manhood.

The Zoot Suit Riots ended after the Navy barred sailors from Los Angeles. Although city officials adamantly denied that the riots were racist, members of the committee convened by Governor Earl Warren to investigate the event maintained that “race prejudice” had been a factor. Across the United States, violence continued to erupt in urban centers with relatively high concentrations of African Americans, such as Detroit, New York, and Philadelphia, during the summer of 1943.

Within Chicano studies, the Zoot Suit Riots continue to receive considerable attention. Scholars, artists, and activists have looked to the riots as a turning point in Mexican-American history, and to the pachuco as an icon of Chicano resistance and style.

SEE ALSO Chicano Movement; Mexicans.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Alvarez, Luis. 2005. “Zoot Violence on the Home Front: Race, Riots, and Youth Culture during World War II.” In Mexican Americans and World War II, edited by Maggie RivasRodríguez, 141–175. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Escobar, Edward J. 1999. Race, Police, and the Making of a Political Identity: Mexican Americans and the Los Angeles Police Department, 1900–1945. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Mazón, Mauricio. 1984. The Zoot Suit Riots: The Psychology of Symbolic Annihilation. Austin: University of Texas Press.

McWilliams, Carey. 1968 (1948). North from Mexico: The Spanish-speaking People of the United States. New York: Greenwood Press.

Pagán, Eduardo Obregón. 2003. Murder at the Sleepy Lagoon: Zoot Suits, Race, and Riot in Wartime L.A. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Ramírez, Catherine S. 2002. “Crimes of Fashion: The Pachuca and Chicana Style Politics.” Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism 2 (2): 1–35.

Catherine S. Ramírez