The violence that beset Los Angeles was the product of rising racial tensions brought on by a variety of wartime factors across the United States in 1943.īefore it became a target for racial violence, the zoot suit was a new fashion that appealed to Black men in Harlem and was made popular by performers like Cab Calloway and Lionel Hampton. It was part of an identity that signaled a youthful masculinity and pride in belonging to a pachuco culture that embraced style and swagger-statements that challenged discriminatory “Juan Crow” laws and practices that often limited the rights of Mexican American men.įor the hundreds of predominantly Mexican American victims of what became known as the Zoot Suit Riots, a jacket and a pair of pants marked them as criminals for white servicemembers and civilians searching for someone to blame for the city’s inability to keep up with its growing population. Why was the zoot suit-high-waisted pants with baggy, pegged legs and a long coat with wide lapels-at the center of a wave of violence that gripped Los Angeles for five days in 1943? Popular among young Mexican American and Filipino American men in California during the early war years, the flamboyant zoot suit was more than a fashion statement. McWilliams soon learned that the attackers that night were looking for “every zoot-suiter they could find.” out of their seats,” and beat them “with sadistic frenzy.” McWilliams was stunned as the mob continued moving through downtown Los Angeles and wreaking havoc, seemingly unstoppable. “A mob of several thousand soldiers, sailors, and civilians” stopped streetcars carrying patrons throughout the metro area, jerked “Mexicans, and some Filipinos and Negroes. “Thousands of Angelenos turned out for a mass lynching,” he reported. On Monday, June 7, 1943, California-based journalist Carey McWilliams could only stand with the crowd gathered on Broadway in Los Angeles and watch the chaos unfold before his eyes. ![]() Top image: A group of Mexican American “zoot suiters” arrested during the Zoot Suit Riots, June 9, 1943.
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