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The Zoot-Suit and Style Warfare by Stuart Cosgrove

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The Zoot-Suit and Style Warfare by Stuart Cosgrove Stuart Cosgrove, “The Zoot Suit and Style Warfare” 1. What does Cosgrove mean when he suggests that the zoot suiters were “the stewards of something uncomfortable”? 2. How were pachucos doubly alienated? How did they deal with their alienation? What role did the zoot suit play in this process? 3. Why did wearing a zoot suit open pachucos to attacks by soldiers? Why was wearing a zoot suit a form of opposition? 4. How did press coverage of the zoot suit riots distort or oversimplify the reality of the situation? 5. How did the presence of groups like the “Black Widows” unsettle both whites and Mexican adults? 6. Why were government officials concerned about the zoot suit riots? How did initial official reactions to the riots obscure their true causes and significance? The Zoot-Suit and Style Warfare by Stuart Cosgrove INTRODUCIION: THE SILENT NOISE OF SINISTER CLOWNS What about those fellows waiting still and silent thereon the platform,so still and silent they clash with the crowd in their very immobility,standing noisy in theirvery silence; harsh as a cry of terror in their quietness? What about these three boys, coming now along the plat- form, tall and sknder, walking with swingingshoulders in theirwell-pressed, too-hot-for-summersuits, their collars high and tight about their necks, their identicalhats of blackcheap felt set upon the crowns of their heads with a severe formality above their conked hair? It was as though Id never seen their like before: walking slowly, their shoulders swaying, their legs swingingfrom their hips in trousersthat ballooned upward from cuffs fitting snug about their ankles; their coats long and hip-tight withshoulders far too broad to be those of natural westernmen. These fellows whose bodies seemed- whathad one of my teacherssaid of me? - 'You'relike one of those African sculptures, distortedin the interestof design.' Well, what design and whose?' The zoot-suit is more than an exag- gerated costume, more than a sartorial statement, it is the bearerof a complex and contradictory history. When the nameless narratorof Ellison's Invisibk Man confrontedthe subversivesight of three young and extravagantlydressed blacks, his reaction was one of fascin- ation not of fear. These youths were not simply grotesque dandies parading the city's secret underworld,they were 'the stewardsof something uncomfort- Clyde Duncan, a bus-boyfrom Gainesville, Georgia, appearedon the front page of the New York Timesat the height of the zoot-suit riots. 78 History WorkshopJournal able'2, a spectacularreminder that the social order had failed to contain their energy and difference. The zoot-suit was more than the drape-shapeof 1940s fashion, more than a colourful stage-prop hanging from the shoulders of Cab Calloway, it was, in the most direct and obvious ways, an emblem of ethnicity and a way of negotiating an identiy. The zoot-suit was a refusal: a subcultural gesturethat refusedto concede to the mannersof subservience.By the late 1930s, the term 'zoot' was in commoncirculation within urbanjazz culture. Zoot meant something worn or performed in an extravagantstyle, and since many young blacks wore suits with outrageouslypadded shoulders and trousers that were fiercelytapered at the ankles, the termzoot-suit passed into everydayusage. In the sub-culturalworld of Harlem'snightlife, the languageof rhymingslang succinctly described the zoot-suit's unmistakablestyle: 'a killer-dillercoat with a drape- shape, reat-pleatsand shoulderspadded like a lunatic's cell'. The study of the relationshipsbetween fashionand social actionis notoriouslyunderdeveloped, but there is every indicationthat the zoot-suit riots that eruptedin the United States in the summer of 1943 had a profoundeffect on a whole generationof socially disadvantagedyouths. It was during his period as a young zoot-suiter that the Chicano union activist Cesar Chavez first came into contact with community politics, and it was throughthe experiencesof participatingin zoot-suit riots in Harlem that the young pimp 'Detroit Red' began a politicaleducation that trans- formed him into the Black radical leader Malcolm X. Although the zoot-suit occupies an almost mythicalplace within the history of jazz music, its social and political importancehas been virtuallyignored. There can be no certaintyabout when, where or why the zoot-suit came into existence, but what is certainis that duringthe summermonths of 1943 'the killer-dillercoat' was the uniformof young rioters and the symbol of a moral panic about juvenile delinquencythat was to intensifyin the post-warperiod. At the height of the Los Angeles riots of June 1943, the New York Times carrieda front page article which claimed without reservationthat the first zoot- suit had been purchasedby a black bus worker, Clyde Duncan, from a tailor's shop in Gainesville, Georgia.3Allegedly, Duncan had been inspiredby the film 'Gone with the Wind' and had set out to look like Rhett Butler. This explanation clearlyfound favourthroughout the USA. The nationalpress forwardedcountless others. Some reportsclaimed that the zoot-suitwas an inventionof Harlemnight life, others suggested it grew out of jazz culture and the exhibitionist stage- costumps of the band leaders, and some argued that the zoot-suit was derived from militaryuniforms and importedfrom Britain. The alternativeand indepen- dent press, particularlyCrisis and Negro Quarterly,more convincinglyargued that the zoot-suit was the productof a particularsocial context.4They emphasisedthe importanceof Mexican-Americanyouths, or pachucos, in the emergenceof zoot- suit style and, in tentativeways, tried to relate their appearanceon the streets to the concept of pachuquismo. In his pioneering book, The Labyrinthof Solitude, the Mexican poet and social commentatorOctavio Paz throws imaginativelight on pachuco style and indirectlyestablishes a frameworkwithin which the zoot-suit can be understood. Paz's study of the Mexicannational consciousness examines the changes brought about by the movement of labour, particularlythe generationsof Mexicanswho migrated northwardsto the USA. This movement, and the new economic and The Zoot-suitand Style Warfare 79 social patternsit implies, has, accordingto Paz, forced young Mexican-Americans into an ambivalentexperience between two cultures. What distinguishesthem, I think, is their furtive, restless air: they act like personswho are wearingdisguises, who are afraidof a stranger'slook because it could strip them and leave them stark naked. This spiritual condition, or lack of a spirit, has given birth to a type known as the pachuco. The pachucosare youths, for the most part of Mexicanorigin, who form gangs in southerncities; they can be identifiedby their languageand behaviouras well as by the clothingthey affect. They are instinctiverebels, and North American racism has vented its wrath on them more than once. But the pachucos do not attemptto vindicatetheir race or the nationalityof their forebears.Their attitude reveals an obstinate, almost fanaticalwill-to-be, but this will affirms nothing specific except their determination . not to be like those around them.5 Pachucoyouth embodiedall the characteristicsof second generationworking-class immigrants.In the most obvious ways they had been strippedof their customs, beliefs and language.The pachucoswere a disinheritedgeneration within a disad- vantaged sector of North Americansociety; and predictablytheir experiencesin education, welfare and employmentalienated them from the aspirationsof their parents and the dominant assumptionsof the society in which they lived. The pachuco subculturewas defined not only by ostentatious fashion, but by petty crime, delinquencyand drug-taking.Rather than disguise their alienationor efface their hostilityto the dominantsociety, the pachucos adoptedan arrogantposture. They flauntedtheir difference,and the zoot-suitbecame the means by which that differencewas announced.Those 'impassiveand sinisterclowns' whose purpose was 'to cause terrorinstead of laughter,'6invited the kind of attentionthat led to both prestige and persecution. For Octavio Paz the pachuco's appropriationof the zoot-suitwas an admissionof the ambivalentplace he occupied. 'It is the only way he can establisha more vital relationshipwith the society he is antagonising. As a victim he can occupy a place in the world that previouslyignored him; as a delinquent,he can become one of its wicked heroes.'7The zoot-suit riots of 1943 encapsulatedthis paradox.They emergedout of the dialecticsof delinquencyand persecution,during a period in which Americansociety was undergoingprofound structuralchange. The major social change broughtabout by the United States' involvementin the war was the recruitmentto the armedforces of over four million civiliansand the entranceof over five millionwomen into the war-timelabour force. The rapid increase in militaryrecruitment and the radical shift in the compositionof the labourforce led in turnto changesin familylife, particularlythe erosionof parental control and authority. The large scale and prolonged separationof millions of families precipitatedan unprecedentedincrease in the rate of juvenile crime and delinquency.By the summerof 1943 it was commonplacefor teenagersto be left to their own initiativeswhilst their parentswere either on active militaryservice or involved in war work. The increase in night work compoundedthe problem. With their parents or guardiansworking unsocial hours, it became possible for many more young people to gather late into the night at
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