Zoot Suit
Sixty-six years ago on 3rd June 1943 in Los Angeles, an uneasy blend of cultural, racial, social and world events finally combusted in what would become known as the Zoot Suit Riots - an episode that would prove to be symbolic for as many reasons as those which caused it. The Zooters were the first fashion-led youths to be associated with rebellion and delinquency; their influence would reverberate profoundly for future generations of disaffected 'teenagers' (a phenomenon that was about to explode). The riots would also spawn a powerful breed of civil rights activists, including a young hoodlum/pimp known as Detroit Red whose experience when the fighting spread to New York would transform him into Malcolm X
In the preceding two decades, an influx of Mexicans had gravitated to Los Angeles. The socially disadvantaged second-generation Mexican Americans struggled with their identity - caught, as they were, between two cultures. Their disenfranchisement gave birth to the pachucos - a proto-gang group of youths who created their own dialect and appropriated the zoot suit from the black jazzers to be used as a peacock-like badge of their marginalization.Â
Meanwhile, America was adjusting to being at war. This had widespread social implications: as able-bodied men enlisted, women were needed to make up the labour shortfall, leading to separation and the loss of authority within families. Additionally, there was rationing. In 1942, the War Production's Board had ordered a 26% cutback in the use of fabrics - which meant that all regulation wartime suits were to be 'streamlined'. Bootleggers, however, continued to manufacture zoot suits in order to supply the demand. And those who wore the flamboyant and extravagant garments were not only deemed to be provocatively flaunting their lack of patriotism, they were making themselves easy targets for the thousands of xenophobic white serviceman who were based in Los Angeles.
On 30th May, a white marine had been badly injured in a fracas with pachucos. On the night of 3rd June, a vigilante group of 50 sailors set on revenge and asserting their status went out onto the streets of Los Angeles and viciously attacked anyone wearing a zoot suit - their first victims were two boys of twelve and thirteen. The servicemen then stripped (and, in some instances, pissed on) their victims before burning the offending garment in what would become a ritual that would persist throughout the duration of the riots. In the next week, thousands of servicemen would join in the 'hunt' for zooters, fuelled by a local press who lauded the Marines for responding to justifiable provocation. One paper even published a how-to guide: "Grap a zooter.
Take off his pants and frock coat and take them off and burn them. Trim the 'Argentine Ducktail' that goes with the screwy costume." (The Los Angeles press had been stoking racial tensions within the Mexican American community since the Sleepy Lagoon murder the previous year - known as a precursor to the Zoot Suit Riots, in which six hundred Mexican American youths had been arrested in association with the crime; seventeen convictions were later reversed after the infamously unjust trial was found to have not met the lawful requirements of due process.)Â
The police were also unspoken collaborators, as they persistently turned a blind eye to the vigilante military men while unreservedly arresting their victims. On June 9th, the city council banned the wearing of zoot suits, declaring it a "badge of hoodlumism. We prohibit nudism by ordinance, and if we can arrest people for being under dressed we can do so for being overdressed."Â
The fighting in Los Angeles went on for two weeks before the military was finally able to get its men under control. Mirrored riots broke out in other cities where racial tensions prospered: New York, Philadelphia and Detroit (which, just three weeks later, would be the setting for a full-scale, non-youth/zoot suit-related race riot).  The First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, was criticized for suggesting that the violence in Los Angeles was race-related and, in the wake of the Riots, a committee whose job it was to determine the cause concluded that it had been delinquency, and prejudice had not been a factor.
However, race was certainly a factor in the social disadvantages of the zooters - and these riots would signify a turning point in the politicization of several future civil rights activists in addition to the aforementioned Malcolm X. The Zoot Suit Riots would also be the precursor to the widespread moral panic over the nation's juvenile delinquents which was to deepen after the war, and heralded an even greater threat: rock 'n' roll. Uh oh!
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