Remembering the Zoot Suit Riots

Mural detail, Zoot Suit Riots, Barbara Carrasco, L.A. History: A Mexican Perspective (1981). Courtesy California Historical Society / LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes; photo: Sean Meredith.

“Whites Only,” 1942. Courtesy www.csusmhistory.org.

Zoot Suit Wearer, 1930s. Courtesy mortaljourney.com.

The Progress of Rioting, 1943. Published in Eduardo Pagan, Murder at the Sleepy Lagoon: Zoot Suits, Race, and Riot in Wartime L.A. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003).

Uniformed servicemen rioted throughout Los Angeles, targeting young men in zoot suits, 1943. Courtesy of the Los Angeles Examiner Collection, USC Libraries.

U.S. armed forces personnel with wood clubs on street during “zoot suit” riot, Los Angeles, 1943. Courtesy Library of Congress.
Gene Sherman, “Youth Gangs Leading Cause of Delinquency,” Los Angeles Times, June 2, 1943
Fresh in the memory, of Los Angeles is last year’s surge of gang violence that made the “zoot suit” a badge of delinquency. . . .
Although “zoot suits” became a uniform of delinquency because of their popularity among the gangs, their adoption by some of the city’s youth was more a bid for recognition, a way of being “different,” in the opinion of Heman G. Stark, County Protection Office chief of delinquency prevention.
Stark and Superior Judge Robert H. Scott of Juvenile Court concur in the belief that the formation of gangs was an outgrowth of a feeling of inferiority on the part of minority groups.

U.S. military personnel stopping a streetcar while roaming the streets of Los Angeles in search of zoot-suiters, June 1943. AP Images via www.britannica.com.

Policemen, servicemen, and civilians patrolling the streets of Los Angeles, 1943. Courtesy forum.skyscraperpage.com.
Quoted in Selden Menefee, Assignment: USA (New York, 1943):
. . . zoot-suits smoldered in the ashes of street bonfires where they had been tossed by grimly methodical tank forces of service men. . . . The zooters, who earlier in the day had spread boasts that they were organized to ‘kill every cop’ they could find, showed no inclination to try to make good their boasts. . . . Searching parties of soldiers, sailors and Marines hunted them out and drove them out into the open like bird dogs flushing quail. Procedure was standard: grab a zooter. Take off his pants and frock coat and tear them up or burn them. Trim the “Argentine Ducktail” haircut that goes with the screwy costume.

Police stand by as Zoot Suit wearers are beaten and stripped of their clothes, 1943. Courtesy messynessychic.com.

“Zoot Suiters” under Arrest in Los Angeles, 1943. Courtesy Library of Congress.

Mexican American youths detained for questioning, 1943 Courtesy Department of Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, University of California at Los Angeles. Copyright UC Regents.
Carey McWilliams, North from Mexico: The Spanish-speaking People of the United States(1948)
Marching through the streets of downtown Los Angeles, a mob of several thousand soldiers, sailors, and civilians, proceeded to beat up every zoot suiter they could find. Pushing its way into the important motion picture theaters, the mob ordered the management to turn on the house lights and then ran up and down the aisles dragging Mexicans out of their seats. Streetcars were halted while Mexicans, and some Filipinos and Negroes, were jerked from their seats, pushed into the streets and beaten with a sadistic frenzy.
“Zoot-Suiters Again on the Prowl as Navy Holds Back Sailor,” Washington Post, Wednesday, June 9, 1943:
Disgusted with being robbed and beaten with tire irons, weighted ropes, belts and fists employed by overwhelming numbers of the youthful hoodlums, the uniformed men passed the word quietly among themselves and opened their campaign in force on Friday night.
At central jail, where spectators jammed the sidewalks and police made no efforts to halt auto loads of servicemen openly cruising in search of zoot-suiters, the youths streamed gladly into the sanctity of the cells after being snatched from bar rooms, pool halls and theaters and stripped of their attire.

Zoot suit rioters celebrate after they are acquitted, October 26, 1944. Courtesy kcet.org; photo: Bettmann/Getty Images.
- Evan Andrews, “What were the Zoot Suit Riots?” Dec. 8, 2015; http://www.history.com/news/ask-history/what-were-the-zoot-suit-riots
- Stuart Cosgrove, “The Zoot-Suit and Style Warfare,” History Workshop Journal 18 (Autumn 1984)
- Richard Griswold del Castillo, “The Los Angeles ‘Zoot Suit Riots’ Revisited: Mexican and Latin American Perspectives,” Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos 16, no. 2 (Summer 2000): 367-391; http://sites.middlebury.edu/liminallatinos/files/2012/02/ZootSuitriotsMexStudies.pdf
- Robert Ito, “‘Zoot Suit,’ a Pioneering Chicano Play, Comes Full Circle,” New York Times, Jan. 26, 2017; https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/26/theater/zoot-suit-a-pioneering-chicano-play-comes-full-circle.html?_r=0
- Carey McWilliams, North from Mexico: The Spanish-speaking People of the United States (Greenwood Press, 1990)
- PBS, People & Events: The Zoot Suit Riots of 1943; http://www.pbs.org/wgbh//amex/zoot/eng_peopleevents/e_riots.html
- Zoot Suit Riots (1943), Primary source articles, https://web.viu.ca/davies/h324war/zootsuit.riots.media.1943.htm