2: Zoot Suit Riots 43:44

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Most of you listening right now are probably multitasking. Yep, while you're listening to me talk, you're probably also driving, cleaning, exercising, or maybe even grocery shopping. But if you're not in some kind of moving vehicle, there's something else you could be doing right now. Getting an auto quote from Progressive Insurance.

It's easy and you can save money by doing it from your phone. Drivers who save by switching to Progressive save nearly $750 on average. And auto customers qualify for an average of seven discounts. Discounts for having multiple vehicles on your policy, being a homeowner and more.

So just like your favorite podcast, Progressive will be with you 24-7, 365 days a year, so you're protected no matter what. Multitask right now. Quote your car insurance at Progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive.

Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. National average 12-month savings of $744 by new customer surveyed who saved with Progressive between June 2022 and May 2023. Potential savings will vary. Discounts not available in all states and situations. This is an ad by BetterHelp. What are your self-care non-negotiables? The things you know make you feel better even when it's impossible to make time for them.

Like that workout you try to squeeze in between kids' activities, work, and everything else you have going on, and before you know it, it gets pushed to tomorrow. Sound familiar? But it's the moments when you feel like you have no time for yourself when those non-negotiables are more important than ever. Those are the things that keep you strong, healthy, motivated, and prepared to take on everything life demands of you. So why not make therapy one of them?

BetterHelp Online Therapy makes it easy to get started with affordable phone, video, or live chat sessions you can do from anywhere, and the option to message your therapist between sessions if anything comes up. Never skip therapy day with BetterHelp.

Visit BetterHelp.com slash Dark History today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash Dark History. Isn't this a free country? Can't we wear the kind of clothes that we like? Must we be disrobed at the order of other men? An Al Waxman interview with the boy involved in the riot.

Hi friends, happy Wednesday, or Thursday if you're watching over on YouTube. I hope you're having a wonderful day so far. My name is Bailey Sarian and this is the Dark History Podcast. Hello, if you're new, welcome. Take a seat by me, don't be shy. I'm just here to tell you an unsettling, spooky, or twisted story from our past that was more than likely

never covered in history class, you know? They were too busy. But since the inception of schools and their chosen curriculum, there has always been a veil around a lot of real truths behind the world's most notorious moments. There are people still out there with a hell of a lot of power trying to hide mountains of world's truths, afraid of what real history will reveal.

And that's where I come in. To reveal the darker side of the same old history lesson. And it's a real hoot. Zoot suit riot. Riot!

Throw back a bottle of beer. Zoot suit riot. Riot! Have you heard that song? Maybe, maybe not. Well, surprise, surprise. It's actually based off real history. But if you listen to this catchy hit from the late 90s by the Cherry Poppin' Daddies, which like their name is questionable, but okay. If you check out their YouTube, listen to their song, whatever, you would have no idea.

idea that there's actually a really dark history around Zoot Suit Riot. Like it's really a thing, not just a song. On the surface, the song and its video is just like a good old time dancing, drinking, picking up the swinging heap cat or like a chick at the bar. Patrons are laughing and smiling. The

Big brass band pipes out the tune and the charismatic lead singer struts around in his bright blue zoot suit. And before you know it, the song is just stuck in your head for the next week. You're welcome. So now that we have the soundtrack to this story buzzing in our brain, here comes the obvious question.

What the hell is a zoot suit and why is it causing all these riots? So get comfy, throw back a bottle of beer, and prepare to learn the dark history behind the zoot suit riot. So let's jump into the backstory, right? Where it all started. Los Angeles, California, 1942. Now at this point in time, Los Angeles was a rapidly growing city. It was dealing with rapid immigration and World War

two was in full swing. And if you're a cool Mexican-American man living in Los Angeles and you want people to know that you're the shit, you, my friend, would be rocking a zoot suit.

All right, let's pause for a second and tag in one of my favorite researchers, Professor Pagan, who has a plethora of knowledge on this subject. Professor Pagan, I was wondering if you could just introduce yourself. Okay, so my name is Eduardo Obregón Pagan. That's my full name. I'm the Bob Stomping Down Professor of History at Arizona State University.

So I teach American studies and American history. I'm very excited to have you here. And I appreciate you so much for sitting down and having a further chat about the Zoot Suit riots. Because for me personally, I had never heard of this ever. And I was curious as to why. So when doing some research, there's still like a lot of further questions.

that I'm so thankful to have you here. So let's just jump right into it. Can you give us a little explanation about what the race relations were like during the 1940s, specifically in Los Angeles County or Southern California? I would say the overall view of race in the United States in the 1940s was that segregation, racial segregation, was the law of the land.

And it was also socially enforced. So there were a lot of unwritten laws that were expected of people of color. And if you violated them, you could actually suffer violently. The larger picture is this is an area of enforced segregation. I would say at the same time, though, that there are small pockets in different places of the country where people completely ignored that.

So in very small venues, that segregation was completely ignored. And this is where jazz comes in for working class youth, is that jazz culture was inherently this interracial art form. But it's musical, definitely, but it's much more than just the sound. It was by its nature, this kind of this fusion. And young people saw that on the stage and they saw it in the performance that they admired and they replicated it in these jazz clubs.

Right. And so overall picture, yes, enforced segregation, but in certain pockets of the country, absolutely not. And people were willing to simply be themselves and to show what they had in their heart and in their soul as opposed to what their skin color was.

So wearing a zoot suit was a cultural expression that allowed young men and women to visually let people know that you were the boss, you were cool, and it was an empowering gesture. The good ones, the suits I'm talking about, they weren't cheap, okay? The average zoot suit would run a guy or girl

200 bucks, a whole month's salary and equivalent to almost three grand today. That's a lot of money for a suit, right? Yeah. This was especially high during the war times of the early 40s when many people were pinching pennies to feed their families. So let's break down what all this scratch is being spent on. A zoot suit, like other suits, starts with a coat and pants

I know, iconic. The signature coat has broad shoulders with the jacket in at the waist and it flared out from there. The coat extends all the way down to the mid thigh in what was called the fingertip style because the length would stop where your fingertips would reach where your arms were at your sides. The zoot suit pants are baggy. They're pleated and they were high-waisted, which I love because it hides the fupa, you know, high-waisted. It like sucks it in. So they were doing that. Mm-hmm.

To keep the baggy pants from slipping down, a thin belt or suspenders would like hold them high up. Okay, it'd be like right underneath your boobs. The fit then narrows in with pegged cuffs at the ankle to create the dramatic zoot suit shape. Underneath the jacket, you would wear like a dress shirt with long sleeves. Now here's the thing.

Absolutely no wrinkles. Okay, your iron game needs to be strong. Damn it. You cannot leave the house with a wrinkle. All right, that's just not acceptable and you're not gonna do that. Today, we do that. But like back then, no, nay nay. So then comes either a short tie or you would leave it unbuttoned at the top if you wanna feel like a nice breeze through your chest hair. And then you would get a hat to match and it was time to hit the club after that. This outfit defied competition.

traditional men's suits in every way. This was the in-your-face suit. These suits were even gender bending. Wartime production jobs meant that the working class youth, or like young adults, I should say, for the first time, they had money of their own to burn.

Also, women had their own money too, which led to some of the women turning it around, the zoot suits, and they were wearing them themselves for self-empowerment to show like, hey, I'm a boss too. And these were some boss lady suits. Now, this was a huge violation of gender norms at the time and the women wearing the suits freaking loved it because we like challenging the system, let's be real. Okay, so I know a lot of men were wearing the zoot suits

But during the research, we learned that like women were kind of doing it as a sign of empowerment. Was it just as popular for women or was it like really bold for women to wear a zoot suit? Would they not even touch it? If you took a survey of how many young people wore the drape or the zoot suit, the majority of them would be young men. There were some young women who did it as well, particularly on the West Coast. And to do so was really quite bold.

Again, this is a period where women didn't wear pants. Yeah. And to wear pants was considered to be highly scandalous. So to be wearing a man's suit was to really push all sorts of boundaries. Yes. Gender, race, I mean, you name it, it just pushed all the boundaries. So for those young women who put it on, they...

They were bold. Yeah. They were bold. I guess that's where I get stuck because women, I mean, again, weren't even allowed to wear pants. So what pushed a woman to put on a zoot suit? Because that back then is just considered, oh, absolutely not so, to put on pants. So it's like, what set this woman off to be like, you know what? I'm putting on pants today. I'm going to do it. You know, like how?

You know, I would just say, you know, in every generation, you know, there are those people who are willing to push the boundaries and they were willing to to make a statement by how they look and how they're going to present themselves out in public. And you have you have young people like that in every generation. And so I don't know what it was that inspired them necessarily. But it is something that I think is admirable. Yeah. Again, to push the boundaries and to expand people's minds and they pay for it.

They paid for it in some tragic ways. So same long fingertip length coat for the women accessories like knee-high bobby socks, dark lipstick, and a flower in your hair. Zoot suiters, they went big with their hair, which I love. It was like they were trying to reach Jesus with their hair. And it would actually get them in a lot more trouble.

because the signature hairstyle, it was like a big pompadour. It was swept back with a lot of height. But thanks to the sexualized stereotypes of women of color, these looks were quickly considered promiscuous. And newspapers would wrongly accuse young women of hiding weapons in their hair.

like knives or fingernail files. The newspapers would also falsely accuse them of being members of gangs, having STDs, or getting into petty fights. Again, with no proof to back their claims. It was just racist journalists using their platform to create a false narrative. How ridiculous, but also a good place to hide a knife. Just saying, if you needed one. So in this time, fashion would write your narrative.

The combo of your heritage mixed with your own fashion choice is like a double whammy, okay? So you have this fantastic suit you want to wear with your big, amazing, gorgeous hair. And now police consider you to be rebelling against convention. And within a lot of working class conservative families, the style and the attitude was perceived to be a threat to the stability of families. Fathers especially, boo.

They just like this trend of their daughters wearing the zoot suit style. Some of them would go as far as tearing up the suits to shreds if they were caught out in public wearing one. Oh yeah. And like the fathers would threaten to put their daughters on the streets, kick them out, if they were ever seen wearing a zoot suit. So close your eyes and imagine with me

A bunch of angry dads running around the streets with scissors, just looking for like a zoot suit to shred. So everyone was asleep in your house, right? You could sneak out the bedroom window with your zoot suit, take it for a spin. This was the kind of outfit you'd wear dancing, listening to popular music, taking over the town, jazz. The zoot colors were always really bright, eye-catching, super loud, very in your face. It was supposed to be flashy. You wanted to stand out. That was the whole point of it.

Matched up with the tight waisted flowing dress wrapped around your dance partner, the most stylish zoot suit brought the best dancers, who then got the best dance partners and the rest plays like an old timey movie, where everyone gets married and has little babies and puts them in tiny zoot suits. Storps. For a lot of young people, it felt good to be young living in Los Angeles, expressing their creativity, style,

loud and proud. But during these times in America, not everyone is going to appreciate your fashion sense. This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Most of you listening right now are probably multitasking. Yep.

While you're listening to me talk, you're probably also driving, cleaning, exercising, or maybe even grocery shopping. But if you're not in some kind of moving vehicle, there's something else you could be doing right now. Getting an auto quote from Progressive Insurance. It's easy and you can save money by doing it from your phone. Drivers who save by switching to Progressive save nearly $750 on average. And auto customers qualify for an average of seven discounts.

discounts for having multiple vehicles on your policy, being a homeowner, and more. So just like your favorite podcast, Progressive will be with you 24, 7, 365 days a year, so you're protected no matter what. Multitask right now. Quote your car insurance at Progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive.

Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. National average 12-month savings of $744 by new customer surveyed who saved with Progressive between June 2022 and May 2023. Potential savings will vary. Discounts not available in all states and situations. This is an ad by BetterHelp. What are your self-care non-negotiables? The things you know make you feel better even when it's impossible to make time for them.

Like that workout you try to squeeze in between kids' activities, work, and everything else you have going on, and before you know it, it gets pushed to tomorrow. Sound familiar? But it's the moments when you feel like you have no time for yourself when those non-negotiables are more important than ever. Those are the things that keep you strong, healthy, motivated, and prepared to take on everything life demands of you. So why not make therapy one of them?

BetterHelp Online Therapy makes it easy to get started with affordable phone, video, or live chat sessions you can do from anywhere, and the option to message your therapist between sessions if anything comes up. Never skip therapy day with BetterHelp.

Visit BetterHelp.com slash Dark History today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash Dark History. In the 1940s, the demand for labor in booming Southern California was bringing in thousands of Mexicans over the border through labor contracts. Now, this upset a lot of white people threatened by their new presence. Mix this with undertones of racism and a derogatory term used like

punk to describe these men who did not follow American social norms. They would refer to them as pachuco. So when did the term pachuco arrive? And when did it become kind of a bad word than real meaning? To my knowledge, the term originated in El Paso. The best that I could determine was probably the 1920s.

And Pachuco was always a way of describing someone as a punk, right? But not in a good way. Now, as we think about punk music today, it's like, you know, punk is cool. But no, this was a punk. This was a jerk. This was someone you didn't want your children associated with. It was those trashy types, right? That's kind of the sentiment behind the term Pachuco. And so it originated in El Paso. It expands as a way of kind of describing people

people who were behaving in ways that parents didn't approve of. And so then as we move into the 1940s, particularly Los Angeles, the war itself created this widespread anxiety that juvenile delinquency was going to go through the roof. So if you think about it, every able-bodied father was off fighting the war.

Every able-bodied mother was in the factories creating munitions for the men to fight in the war. And so there's this tremendous concern, what's happening to the kids? In the 1980s, we used to, we call this term latchkey children. We don't use that term very much anymore, but it's basically children who come home and there's no parental supervision at all. What's going to happen to them? What are they doing? Well, back in the 1940s, they call it juvenile delinquency. And so it's kind of like the mainstream media, the press tried to

come to terms with this so-called juvenile delinquency problem, which it wasn't. They latched on this term, pachucle, as a way of describing these punks, right? These ill-mannered young people who were, again, were pushing boundaries and were frightening the parental generation. So is that why it was kind of related to the zoot suit? It's because they were kind of pushing boundaries by wearing the suit out and

Yeah, yeah. So I would argue that there are actually two different phenomena that are overlapping with each other. If someone identified as a pachuko or was called a pachuko, it didn't mean it was because they wore a jutsu. It didn't mean that at all. And someone who wore a jutsu wasn't necessarily a pachuko. I would argue that someone who wore a drape or a jutsu, they were just a jazz fan.

They were migrants to the U.S., just refugees fleeing the devastation for the revolution in Mexico. They were not trying to Americanize, and this growing population of Mexican-American migrating north only widened the racial gap in Los Angeles. Even though Los Angeles was a liberal city that claimed to welcome all people,

there was still incredible racism throughout the city towards anyone who was not white. And if tonight is the night to reveal that new Zoot Suit, a white police officer might look at you and think you might be a criminal, a delinquent, or even anti-American.

All because of your dumb little green suit and your towering pompadour, right? Like it's just a suit. Get over it. It's complicated back then, right? In my opinion, the officer in this example is most likely dealing with some kind of jealousy issues because maybe his shirt is wrinkly or he just wants to look fabulous. No wrinkles. Iron game needs to be strong, okay?

But still, racial tensions would run high night after night on the streets of Los Angeles. The zoot suit was seen as a flag to its opposers that they are different, that they are dangerous. But all they were trying to do was have a little freaking fun. It is clear there are people in this city that don't care for this group or the suit they are wearing. So it's World War II and the U.S. is about to invade Japan by air for the first time.

The war effort is raging and as more soldiers deploy, the tighter regulations get on the materials and goods being made in the US. In March of 1942, tailors had to stop selling zoot suits because of wartime fabric

Oh yes. They were like, we need these materials for the war, so you're gonna have to put a limit on how much fabric you can use. At the same time, the zoot suit style, which required lots of fabric to achieve, was hugely popular, and now it was at a national scale.

People were still interested in buying them despite this new regulation. So stores like Murray's, Young's, and Earl's would design, produce, and sell custom bootleg zoot suits. Now this led to the spread of the idea that the zoot suits were giving a big middle finger to the whites. White Americans began to view the young Mexican-American men wearing the suit as anti-war and therefore anti-American and unpatriotic. But if you look at the fact

jazz culture wasn't anti-war. These kids just love the music and dancing and it's just a suit. Okay, so I think that's what I was misunderstanding. It's more about jazz culture and the music and that's where it really came from. And then once it became mainstream, for some reason, the zoot suit became a bad thing. Well, the zoot suit again was always considered to be a bad thing because jazz music was not mainstream music. So if we went back in time,

And turned on the radio. That would be our only means to listening to popular music. You turn on the radio. And of course, they had the top 40s back then, like they do today on mainstream radio.

You would never hear jazz. This was underground music. And so even the airwaves were segregated. And so that's what made the whole thing scandalous. Would you say that white people were not very accepting of jazz music or were they also into jazz music as well? Yeah, so I would characterize this not so much as a racial differentiation. Mm-hmm.

more as a class and generational differentiation. So for parents and grandparents, of course, you know, you don't want to call social disruption upon your head by violating the laws that are outside. And so, of course, you want to be very cautious. In fact, I put this in this context. On my mother's side, my grandparents were refugees from Mexico.

from the revolution. And their attitude when they came to the United States was keep your head down. Don't get in trouble. Just keep your head down, right? Because they had been through violence and they weren't interested in calling violence upon themselves anymore. They just wanted to be left alone, right? And that's how a lot of, for Mexican-Americans, that's kind of how they approached life was just keep your head down and be quiet. Don't make a mess.

But for young people, though, who grew up in the United States, for the children of these refugees, where this was the land that they knew, it was the only land that they knew, this was their culture as well. They embraced jazz because it provided a different vision of what this nation could be and what the future could be like. And it wasn't one that was defined, again, by the color of your skin. It was defined about what you had inside.

And it was the opportunity to show what you had inside. That's where jazz was important. So jazz appealed to working class young people across the color line.

So you had white kids wearing zoot suits and dancing the jitterbug and listening to jazz music. You had Filipinos, Italians, Jews, Mexican-Americans, African-Americans. But I would argue for the middle class and certainly for the parental class, if you will, for parents and grandparents, this was an affront. It's like, oh my gosh, the world's coming to the end. What are these young people doing, right? Same thing happened with rock and roll in the 1950s. Same kind of reaction that, you know, this is...

Western civilization is going to collapse because of this popular expression. But with the influx of industrial jobs and the new goal of making Los Angeles a wartime center of industry, new military outposts, bases, and stations were built in the city. The Naval Reserve Training Center was a multi-million dollar facility built brand new. The government had to decide where to put it, and they didn't want to inconvenience or deal with complacency.

from any of their white residents in Los Angeles. So they're like, let's just build it in the middle of a mainly like Mexican-American neighborhood. No one will notice, you know? And it was named Chavez Ravine, which led to displacing Mexican-American residents who had like,

little power to fight this decision. And I kind of laughed right now because it's like, oh my God, like how many times do we have to hear this damn story, right? Same thing, same thing all the time. It's exhausting. But to add insult, the training school was only for white sailors. The Zoot suiters were feeling like, hey, these guys are coming into our spaces and our homes. Meanwhile, the whites are feeling overly confident like they run this place. And because of this, tensions are brewing.

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Most of you listening right now are probably multitasking. Yep, while you're listening to me talk, you're probably also driving, cleaning, exercising, or maybe even grocery shopping. But if you're not in some kind of moving vehicle, there's something else you could be doing right now. Getting an auto quote from Progressive Insurance.

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Sailors, on their nights off, they were trying to do something, right? They're trying to go out dancing, go to movies, go to bars, out to eat. They're just trying to do anything with their free time. So the zoot suiters would physically block them from going in or threaten them to go away. They didn't want them to come into their bars, their restaurants, their movie theaters. Like they were blocking them from getting in.

The whole city was swarming with the Navy guys and the zoot suiters didn't want their favorite spots to also be taken from them and they're going to stay on their ground. So again, tensions are a-brewing. Something's bound to happen.

Conflicts between the zoot suiters and the sailors are escalating more and more every day. There was so much tension in the air. And with all like this built up rage, these men are just looking for a fight. So one of the things that I found in my research was that I found that for two years prior to the outbreak of this fighting, there was an escalating series of street confrontations between local kids and the sailors that were stationed at a particular location.

armory just north of downtown Los Angeles. Now, Chavez Ravine had long been populated by Jews and Mexican-Americans and African-Americans as well. And so suddenly in the middle of these fairly poor neighborhoods, you get this million dollar facility plopped right in the middle. Yeah. And then you add to the fact that the military is segregated during this period. So these are all white officers.

Right? Right.

swaggering through their neighborhoods, you know, and they would, it'd be insulting the people that they saw there. And so the young people would fight back. They would even say, hey, you can't, you can't talk to my mother that way or my sister that way. Get out of here. Eventually verbal altercations then started to become physical altercations, shoving and, and,

standing in front of them and things like that. So this is happening for two years. Now there is a growing distrust of immigrants, especially the so-called Pachuco culture. And there's a rampant racism fueled by the new explosion of non-conforming culture. That non-conforming identity is shown through wearing the zoot suit. So the suit now becomes the target. So with that being said, it's day one, June 3rd, 1943.

And a sailor at the reserve spots some teenagers in zoot suits and reports what he saw to higher ups. So he goes to the big guy and is like, hey, I saw some guy wearing some zoot suits, you know, so he says that. And then word gets around to the other young men on the street and they're all just like looking for a fight.

Well, this puts all the white Navy guys on edge. Like they just, you know how they all get each other hyped up? That's what they're doing. They're like, hey, it's all these jiu-jitsu guys. We're gonna go kick their ass. Come on. And they just start looking for a fight. You get it. Anyways, another group of Navy guys go out from the training center and when they're walking, they-

also run into people in zoot suits. This time though, it's two Mexican girls and four boys. According to reports, the zoot suiters harassed the sailors, messing with them, cursing at them, and even calling them names. And it was just like,

Everything to make them mad, super intense, very aggressive, right? But the white sailors must have said some shit back, of course, let's be honest here. But we don't really actually know because no one cared about asking the zoot suiters for their side of the story. So when the media was reporting on this, they mainly got all their information from the white side of the story. So they played them out to the zoot suiters to be the bad guys.

Surprise, surprise. Are we surprised? I mean, it seemed like the riots...

It just kind of happened. And then it turned into this huge mob of just fighting. How did news spread that these riots were taking place? Was it word of mouth? Was it the newspapers, TV? It was both. And this is a crazy thing is that this escalated exponentially. So the first night of writing, it was the guys stationed at this Naval Reserve Armory in the Chavez Ravine, where Dodger Stadium is right now. In fact, that building is still there. Okay.

You can see exactly where they started. Right. And so it started between those guys and the guys in the neighborhoods between the downtown and this armory. Right. So as the naval personnel, as they would go through these neighborhoods, that's where these confrontations happened. That was the first night. And then afterwards, it began to just grow exponentially so that by four or five nights later, you have hundreds of military personnel all around Southern California.

In fact, there's some stories that people actually took buses from San Diego and as far away as Las Vegas. I don't know if it's true, but there were stories of military men just pouring in because the story was that the local population of hoodlums, of punks,

Pachucos were out of control. By that point, as the riot escalates, then you start seeing a very clear racial nature of this, where they move specifically into East LA, which was predominantly Mexican-American, where they move specifically down into South Central, which was predominantly African-American. These neighborhoods had nothing to do with the

- The confrontations that were happening right outside the Chavez Ravine, that Naval Reserve Army, had nothing to do with it. But this is now where race then becomes very, very clear, is that you have these offensive maneuvers of people going into neighborhoods and parts of Los Angeles had nothing to do with the initial confrontation. - I'm assuming here

that they probably said some nasty stuff right back to them. I'm sure the Navy guys didn't just sit there and take it. And like, this was the last straw. The Navy men decided tonight that they were gonna do something about these unpatriotic, zoot suit wearing pachucos.

50 sailors, they leave their armory and head downtown. Night one of the zoot suit riots has begun. It's 1943 in Los Angeles and an angry mob of sailors from the all white Naval Academy are marching into downtown Los Angeles looking for anyone who's wearing a zoot suit. Word spread quickly on both sides and soon more officers joined in the mob

of sailors. So a mob of about 50 sailors and officers together with janky weapons that they snuck out with, okay? They targeted neighbors close to their training center and attacked anyone they could find who was wearing a zoot suit. As they reached Alpine Street in a Mexican-American neighborhood near the

armory, more military officers joined the ranks. The mob crowded through the busy popular street just looking for anyone who's wearing a zoot suit. The first they came upon were actually children. That didn't stop them. They found a 12 year old and a 13 year old boy at the Carmen Theater. And these sailors, they beat up these little boys. They ripped off their zoot suits and they burned their clothes right there in the street. What you accomplished there. Anyways, but by 11

the military police had managed to round up the sailors, send them back home to the armory, and they were all back home by 1:00 a.m. Not one sailor was charged with the crime. Nothing. Zip. Zada. Consequences? Never heard of her.

Military police and the LAPD didn't do a damn thing, you know? Maybe if they had, they could have averted what came next. Night two. The group of sailors are feeling a little cocky, a little overconfident, knowing that they can get away with whatever they want. Okay, no one's gonna arrest us. So the next night, a group of the sailors, they drive into East L.A.,

Now they heard a rumor that some of the zoot suiters were holding a group of Navy men hostage. Now this wasn't true, but they heard it, therefore it must be true, therefore we should get revenge. You know, like that makes sense. So a mob again forms with the sailors plus some civilians this time who wanna join in. They're like, oh my God, this looks like fun. Racism?

Yeah, join in, you know, like they just were excited to be there. So they roll up in a full on squad of 20 taxis full of these men literally pulling up to start a fight. So they're, okay, so here's what they do. They pull up in the car, right? They all get out. They all start hunting through different bars, cafes, and theaters. Now they're looking for anyone who's wearing this suit. That's all they're looking for.

for. They would use their makeshift weapons or their fists to just beat anyone they could. Even the authorities were in on it. Is that not a little fucked up? Just over a suit. This is all over a suit. Do you understand? A suit. We're upset over a suit. Yes. So, you've got military men, sailors, civilians, and now cops against these zoot suiters. It took

a full 30 minutes for only one military officer and four cops to make it to the site. They just took their sweet ass time, you know? They're like, meh. Sometimes I don't have words, but sound effects help me with the words. You get it. Anyways, so that night was pretty horrendous. They're walking through the streets. They're just picking up anyone who's got a zoot suit on. They're kicking their ass. They're beating them up pretty badly, leaving them out in the street.

At the end of the night, only nine sailors were arrested. Oh yeah, just a little slap on the wrist. Bad boy. So obviously, the odds are stacked against the zoot suiters. So the next morning, the officials in charge of the Naval Reserve Training Center finally said enough is enough, okay? These big guys in charge had to at least protect

to do something about the fighting because it's not a good look, not a good look for them. But what they did wasn't nearly enough. It was almost comical, honestly. The commanding officer is like, hey guys, we actually technically don't allow attacks on civilians. I know.

bummer, right? Yeah. But yeah, we don't, so don't do that anymore. Okay? Oh, and I'm putting a night patrol out on our streets to keep an eye on you, so don't think about it. So the sailors, they're not feeling very threatened, okay? Because they know like they're gonna get away with it. They're just gonna get a little slap on the wrist. And plus it was too late to contain what already started. Word had already spread far and fast. These servicemen were feeling pretty

hockey after seeing no one got in trouble and hearing the support from the white civilians who joined in just made them a little bit more excited. Another bloodthirsty and violent night was given the name Pachuco Hysteria and it overtook the Los Angeles area. During the weekend, the rioting and violence continued. People from east to west remained indoors and only the loyal and brazen continued to shine their zoot suits in public.

but the fifth day would be the worst. Soldiers, sailors, and marines in places as far as San Diego traveled all the way to Los Angeles to join the fighting. So there's about 5,000 servicemen and supporting civilians. They all hit the streets super excited to fight these zoot suiters. Half of the mob went south with the goal of making it to Watts, which was like home of majority politics.

black neighborhood and the other half went east for the majority Mexican neighborhoods. In Watts, people openly fought back in the streets and the police made arrests, sure, but they mainly arrested young men in the zoot suits who were defending their neighborhood and not the ones maybe doing the attacking. Any talk back and the zoot suiters would be beaten further.

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So they're getting beat by military civilians and now police. Okay, no one is safe and it's their part of town. But in the parts of town where most of the black and Mexican Americans live, the mob is just out of control. The white mob holds up streetcars, pulling people out of their cars and stops traffic to search for zoot suiters. And it takes until 1130 p.m. for one police officer to step out and start to send the remaining mob on their way.

Again, no arrests were made. As the riots reach a climax, the evening press runs special editions announcing that the Zoot suitors plan to, quote, "'Kill every cop they see.'" The papers give details of when and where the supposed attacks are going to occur. ♪

So they're just making this whole situation worse. And they're not even reporting on like, I don't know, the zoot-suter side. So the newspapers use the riots as an opportunity just to spread more of their lies and rumors and to sell more papers while they're doing it. So now we have cops, military, civilians, newsletters,

Newspapers, everyone's in it. Everyone's involved. The servicemen and civilians that converge on downtown Los Angeles beat and strip every zoot suited boy they could find. It didn't matter what color they were, even if they were wearing zoot suits. Anyone could get attacked if they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

So it evolved into like, they were just kicking anyone's ass who was a person of color. They were like, hey you, and then they would just beat you up. Great, we love, yeah, that's great. At the Orpheum Theater, servicemen pull Mexican-American boys to the stage and then they would strip them down. At least half of the victims, they were not even wearing zoot suits, but they were just pulling anyone of color. The Herald and Express reports a police estimate that on this night, more than 700 grotesquely clad homophobic

hoodlums roam Los Angeles bent on the common purpose of engaging in battle with servicemen. That's what they said. I didn't say that. That's what they said. What do you think their end goal was? The Navy guys, they just wanted to kill them all to push them out of LA. Like what did they want?

That is an excellent question. So here's one of the really crazy things about this. So 1943, there were other race riots in the United States, and some of them were quite deadly, right? The Zoot Suit Riot, as this came to be known, was very weird in the sense that there was no known murder that resulted from this rioting. To my knowledge, there was no serious bodily damage that was done. The focus of the...

ire of both the sailors and the military men, but also civilians, was in destroying the jutsu, destroying the clothing of the young people that they found wearing this jazz fashion. I believe it's because this fashion allowed young people of color to stand out on their own terms and to force people to deal with them on their terms, right? I would argue one of the underlying

requirements of segregation was that if you were defined as a person of color, you stay in the background. You never call attention to yourself and you conform. You always defer to white privilege, right? And in very visible ways, right? And so, for example, if there's a white person walking towards you on a sidewalk, you step off onto the street, you let them have the sidewalk, right? These young people, when they dressed in their fine clothing, they felt empowered. Yeah.

And there are lots of stories of these young people wearing these zoot suits who refuse to defer to white privilege. Wow. And it was a way of just saying, I'm here. I'm American, too. This is my country, too. I have a right to be here. And so what's so interesting about this riot is in that effort to destroy the clothing, they were trying to destroy the visible symbols of the self-assertion of these young people of color. Yeah. Right.

Right. That makes way more sense now. Like, how dare you stand out? You're not allowed to unless we give you permission. Kind of like that. Yeah. Wow. We're going to put you back in your place by stripping the clothing off of you. Yeah. Right? Wow. Yeah.

As the morning sun rose on Los Angeles, it was finally quiet. The riots were finally over. It was June 8th, 1943. Over 600 immigrant youth were arrested. Jewish, Black, Italian, Mexican-Americans, anyone wearing a zoot suit. And over 100 people were seriously injured.

Luckily, there were no reported deaths. 94 civilians and 18 servicemen received medical treatment for serious injuries. All 94 of these zoot suiters were arrested by the LAPD. And the LAPD also arrested a couple military guys, but literally it was only two guys, just two. The senior military officials finally did something. They declared Los Angeles out of bounds to all Navy, Coast Guard, and Army personnel. They were like out.

You're causing issues, get out. So the LAPD also made moves and created a special riot patrol to be prepared if this ever happened again, which worked great during both the Watts Riot and the 92 LA Riots. Note my sarcasm, 'cause it's there. On June 9th, the Los Angeles City Council proposed a resolution

policy change. Finally, some sort of justice after all this violence and suffering. They banned the zoot suits within city limits, okay? So if you're caught wearing one, you could be sentenced to a 50-day jail sentence. Cool! This ban, it luckily didn't pass, but this population's stance against the zoot suiters was that they started the riots and they got what they deserved.

The servicemen really felt justified in their actions and why wouldn't they? They'd been attacking people at random while wearing their full military uniforms and had barely gotten a slap on the wrist. The local white press was largely supportive of their acts as well. They would praise them. They were like, yay, you guys are amazing.

and then they went to the LAPD and government officials and like, you guys are doing freaking amazing. We love you. The Los Angeles Times put a photo on their front page of two zoot suiters who had been beaten and stripped and captioned it, quote, unconditional surrenderer. The Herald Express printed instructions on how to de-suit, oh yeah, quote, de-suit, and it was in the newspaper,

It said, "Grab a zooter, take off his pants and frock coat and tear them up or burn them." This is what they're telling the people. The sailors responsible for starting the riots sleep freely, but with blood on their hands, no matter what the article says. ♪ Zoot suit riot, riot ♪ So how did the media portray the riots?

did they put blame? I'm assuming here, but on the zoot suiters. Oh my gosh. So speaking of, yeah, no, you're absolutely right. In fact, to me, one of the most shocking things was that the, the LAPD, the way they responded to this, did they arrest, arrest the writers? No, they arrested the victims for their own safety, right? Put them in jail for their own safety. Did they ever try to stop the writers? No, they didn't. They let them go. Right. So, uh,

The media was, the newspapers was fairly similar in the way they treated this, that these are young people that need to be put back in their place because they're stepping out of their boundaries. They're stepping out of their lane. They need to be put back in place. They refused to call it a race riot. Yeah. Because we don't have racial problems in Los Angeles, not us. Yeah. That was the attitude that they had. Did the Zuzu riots change the race relations in Los Angeles? Yeah.

In the short term, what the riot did was it was a wake-up call for the city of Los Angeles that they needed to have better relations with people of color. And so they created commissions.

In fact, one was a forerunner of the Civil Rights Commission of the 1970s. They sought people in the various constituent communities, African-American communities, Mexican-American communities, who could meet with the city and tell them what's going on and tell them what needed to be improved. And of course, it was all about education and access to opportunity. So it provided those opportunities for more dialogue. Now, change was, of course, much faster.

more slow than what people wanted.

But I would argue that the civil rights movement of the 1950s and the 1960s couldn't have happened without the 1940s, without people starting the dialogue about, OK, how do we do this differently? Right. How do we do this in a way that you are happy and we're happy as well? And so all of that was a forerunner to then the 60s and 70s. So that's kind of an immediate, I would argue, outcome of the Zoot Suit riot was that it opened dialogue.

- So no one from LAPD was held accountable? - No, no, no. This is a constant that goes all the way back to the territorial period of California. - Yeah, it's so exhausting though. I mean, it never ends, does it ever end? So what would you say are the, what are the implications of the Zoot Suit riots today, if any?

Well, I think there are a couple of things that we learn about, some takeaways that I would argue that, you know, one, as I suggested before, that these people really represented the future across the color line. They were anticipating more multicultural, interracial, social environment where people were more judged by what they had inside as opposed to what they had on the outside. And so I

they were the future. And in fact, I would argue, and I do argue in my book that those who rioted against them and tried to put them back in their place, that was the past. That was the past that was trying to keep the past going. - Yeah. - But these young people were the future. - And that is the dark history we never knew about when it comes to the Zoot Suit riots. At least I didn't know it. So I wanted to share it with you guys. Now when you hear that upbeat pop classic, because I know you're probably listening to it all the time,

But at least now you know that there's like a much darker side to it, to those little catchy lyrics of theirs. I don't think the writers of history books in the 50s were looking to out their cop buddy or the military uncle for starting a race riot in the middle of LA for a week. Let's continue the conversation over on Twitter using the hashtag dark history. I can't wait to talk with you. I want to hear about what you think. What did we learn from this story? That's a great question.

Because like nothing came from it. Like no one really got arrested. They tried to pass a law to ban zoot suits. I think there's a problem here, you guys. But I would love to hear what you think. Let me know over on Twitter using hashtag dark history. If you enjoyed this story, join me over on my YouTube where you can watch these episodes after the podcast airs and also catch Murder, Mystery, and Makeup, which drops every Monday.

Thank you guys so much for hanging out with me today. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day. You make good choices. And I'll talk to you next week. Bye. Dark History is an Audioboom original. Executive produced by Chelsea Durgan from Slash Management, Brett Montgomery, Ed Simpson, Fanny Baudry, Avi Gandhi, Daryl Christone, and Spencer Strassmore from Wheelhouse.

Directed by Trent Barboza. Produced by Lexi Kiven. Researcher Elizabeth Hyman. Writers Haley Gordon and Sarah Cimino. Historical Consultant Eduardo Pagan.