Vigilante US servicemen went to war on LA’s zoot-suited Latino youth

EIGHTEEN months after the US joined World War II, the nation’s soldiers and sailors were waging a separate war at home on the streets of Los Angeles, California.

US servicemen carry clubs looking for Latinos in Zoot Suits during the 1943 Zoot Suit Riots in Los Angeles. US Library of Congress pic

EIGHTEEN months after the US joined World War II, the nation’s soldiers and sailors were waging a separate war at home on the streets of Los Angeles, California.

Gang violence was allegedly out of control, while deep-rooted racism simmered beneath the surface.

Conflict brewing between white military servicemen and zoot-suited youths finally boiled over on the night of June 3, 1943 — 75 years ago tomorrow.

Uniformed servicemen armed with sticks and batons targeted the youths, who were primarily of Latin-American heritage, for their alleged gang activities.

The zoot suit-wearing “Chicanos” were also viewed as unpatriotic; their oversized tailoring and excessive use of fabric was considered offensive when everything from food
to fabric was being rationed.

Servicemen, along with the local law enforcement, rounded up the Chicanos, stripped them of their flamboyant suits and threw them in jail.

But media, including the Los Angeles Times, were deafeningly quiet on the racially charged Zoot Suit Riots for at least three days.

It wasn’t until June 7 that the metro paper covered the story publishing a piece titled “Zoot Suiters Learn Lesson in Fights with Servicemen”.

Some of the “Chicano” men arrested during the 1943 Zoot Suit Riots in Los Angeles.

“Those gamin dandies, the zoot suitor, having learned a great moral lesson from servicemen, mostly sailors, who took over their instruction three days ago, are staying home nights,” it read. “With the exception of 61 youths booked in County Jail on misdemeanour charges, wearers of the garish costume that has become a hallmark of juvenile delinquents are apparently ‘unfrocked’.”

On the same day, The New York Times reported that servicemen had declared a war on “zoot suit gangs” who were reportedly causing widespread trouble on the streets and “molesting civilians”.

“Impetus was given to the clean-up campaign when the wives of two sailors were criminally attacked by the youths,” it read.

Within a week more than 500 Latin-American and African-American youths had been arrested in LA.

Los Angeles mayor Fletcher Bowron issued a statement attempting to subdue concerns the riots had turned into a race war.

“The occurrences in this city are not in any manner directed at Mexican citizens or even against persons of Mexican descent,” he said.

“There is no question of racial discrimination involved.

“We have here, unfortunately, a bad situation as the result of the formation and activities of youthful gangs, the members of which, probably to the extent of 98 per cent or more, were born right here in Los Angeles. They are Los Angeles youth, and the problem is purely a local one.”

First lady Eleanor Roosevelt, wife US president Franklin D Roosevelt, in September 1943.

But human rights advocate and first lady Eleanor Roosevelt used her profound influence to speak up about the incident in her daily syndicated newspaper column.

“The question goes deeper than just suits,” she said on June 16. “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 first lady’s remarks led to the Los Angeles Times accusing her of communist leanings in an editorial titled “Mrs Roosevelt blindly stirs race discord”.

“Mrs Eleanor Roosevelt in her public statement Wednesday that zoot suit fights in Los Angeles are due to longstanding discrimination against Mexicans here says something that is as untrue as it is dangerous,” it read.

“For one thing, it shows ignorance.”

“For another, it shows an amazing similarity to the Communist party line propaganda, which has been desperately devoted to making a racial issue of the juvenile trouble here.”

The fractured relationship between white American authority and Mexican-Americans was evident elsewhere however.

The previous year, more than 600 Mexican-Americans were rounded up by Los Angeles police for the murder of José Gallardo Díaz in Commerce, California, coined the Sleepy Lagoon murder.

Despite a lack of evidence, 17 zoot-suiters were arrested, tried and convicted in January 1943 for their involvement in the murder.

While the convictions were overturned the following year, the farcical trial, and negative media coverage of the Mexican “goons” lit a fuse in the Latino community.

By June, the streets were crowded with white American sailors and the stage was set for conflict.