Table of Contents Preface . .vii How to Use This Book . .xi Research Topics for Defining Moments: The Zoot Suit Riots . .xiii NARRATIVE OVERVIEW Prologue . .3 Chapter One:Caught in the Currents of Empire and Conquest . .7 Chapter Two: Rising Tensions in California . .25 Chapter Three: A City on Edge . .43 Chapter Four: The Trial of the 38th Street Boys . .59 Chapter Five: The Zoot Suit Riots . .75 Chapter Six: Release from Prison . .91 Chapter Seven: Legacy of the Zoot Suit Riots . .107 BIOGRAPHIES Fletcher Bowron (1887-1968) . .125 Mayor of Los Angeles during the Sleepy Lagoon Trial and Zoot Suit Riots José Díaz (1919-1942) . .128 Mexican Farm Worker Whose Murder Resulted in the Sleepy Lagoon Trial Charles William Fricke (1882-1958) . .131 Judge Who Presided over the 1943 Sleepy Lagoon Murder Trial Alice Greenfield (1917-2009) . .134 Civil Rights Activist and Member of the Sleepy Lagoon Defense Committee v Defining Moments: The Zoot Suit Riots Henry “Hank” Leyvas (1923-1971) . .137 Mexican-American Defendant in the Sleepy Lagoon Murder Trial Carey McWilliams (1905-1980) . .141 American Journalist and Attorney Who Headed the Sleepy Lagoon Defense Committee Edward Roybal (1916-2005) . .145 First Hispanic-American Member of the Los Angeles City Council and Longtime U.S. Representative George Shibley (1910-1989) . .148 Defense Attorney in the Sleepy Lagoon Murder Trial PRIMARY SOURCES Anglo Squatters Swarm Mexican-Owned Haciendas in California . .153 Examples of Anti-Mexican Discrimination in 1930s America . .156 Depression-Era Los Angeles Targets Mexicans for Repatriation . .161 A Los Angeles Police Officer Issues a Racist Report on the Mexican “Element” . .164 Courtroom Clashes between Fricke and Shibley . .168 Trying to Survive the Zoot Suit Riots . .173 Mexican-American Activists Assess the Causes of the Zoot Suit Riots . .174 The Los Angeles Times Attacks Eleanor Roosevelt’s Stance on the Riots . .177 New Hispanic Hopes and Dreams in the Post-World War II Era . .180 From the Barrio to a German POW Camp—and Back . .185 A Landmark Legal Decision for Mexican Americans . .188 Honoring the Heritage and Contributions of Hispanic Americans . .193 Important People, Places, and Terms . .195 Chronology . .199 Sources for Further Study . .203 Bibliography . .205 Photo and Illustration Credits . .207 Index . .209 vi Chapter Three A City on Edge 5 We’re tired of being told we can’t go to this show or this dance hall because we’re Mexican or that we better not be seen on the beach front, or that we can’t wear draped pants or have our hair cut the way we want to.1 —A Mexican-American zoot suiter in World War II-era Los Angeles fter the U.S. government decided to imprison its Japanese-American pop- ulation in internment camps for the duration of World War II, white Cal- Aifornians turned their anxious gaze toward the growing numbers of Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants in their midst. The bombing of Pearl Harbor had brought to the surface long-simmering white anxieties about nonwhites living and working in the state. Many white residents of Los Ange- les and other cities up and down the Pacific Coast expressed heightened fears that African Americans, people of Mexican descent, and other minorities did not share their appreciation for American customs or their sense of patriotism. Of all these minorities, Mexican-American workers, families, and communities were regarded by white Angelenos with particular distrust. Their uneasiness was fed not only by racist stereotypes that had been passed down from generation to gen- eration, but also by more recent developments. In the late 1930s and early 1940s the sheer number of Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants in Los Angeles and its surrounding region had grown significantly. Like workers of every other ethnicity, they came to take advantage of a wartime economy that had shifted into high gear in 1939, when World War II began in Europe and America agreed to provide England and other Allied 43 Defining Moments: The Zoot Suit Riots nations with military arms and other supplies. These wartime job opportuni- ties had become even more lucrative after the attack on Pearl Harbor, when the United States entered the war. All told, an estimated two million Mexican-American workers relocated during the war to California, where many of the country’s major shipyards and aircraft manufacturers were located. Whites still received preferential treatment over workers of Mexican descent in these bustling defense factories, which made the rifles, jeeps, planes, submarines, and other materials needed by U.S. armed forces. But many Mexican Americans did manage to secure employment in the defense industry, albeit in lower-paying jobs. From 1941 to 1944, for example, the number of Mexican Americans working in Los Angeles shipyards jumped from almost zero to more than 17,000. In addition, the fast-growing defense industry attracted so many Anglo workers that non-defense industries and businesses had to admit greater numbers of Mexicans and African Amer- icans to their payrolls to keep their doors open. The Rise of the Zoot Suit Another factor responsible for escalating white anxieties about Mexicans was a social phenomenon that was taking place all across the city during the early 1940s. Like several other large American cities of the era, Los Angeles experienced a wave of youthful rebellion that greatly disturbed older genera- tions. One of the trademarks of this rebellion was a love for swinging jazz music, which conservative, older Anglo Americans viewed as a sign of slipping moral- ity. As scholar Eduardo Obregón Pagán wrote, “Jazz was to white Americans in the 1940s what rock and roll was in the 1950s and rap was in the 1980s.”2 Critics thought that jazz and swing—a high-energy, big band variation of jazz—encouraged sexual promiscuity and drinking among young people. Even worse in the eyes of many, the theaters and nightclubs where this music was fea- tured showed a complete disregard for longstanding rules of racial segregation. “Race mixing on and off the stage and dance floor was common, and in the age of segregation, such a violation of white supremacy was an outrage,” said Pagán. “As a behavior spreading among the youth, it was perceived as a social danger.”3 The most visible symbol of this cultural revolt by young people, though, was their enthusiasm for a radical, exaggerated version of the traditional busi- ness suit known as the zoot suit. The zoot suit featured long coats with wide padded shoulders and lapels, as well as high-waisted, pleated pants that bil- 44 Defining Moments: The Zoot Suit Riots The exact origins of the zoot suit have been difficult to pinpoint. Frank Walton, who directed the federal government’s efforts to conserve clothing material during World War II, spoke for many when he said that “many attempts have been made to analyze the idea [of the zoot suit] and to see just what caused it and what was behind it but so far there is no good answer.”4 His- torians believe, though, that the zoot suit, which was also sometimes called “the drape,” originated in the mid-1930s in African-American communities in New York and other Eastern cities. Jazz artists based on the East Coast then spread it across the country as they toured. Each region of the country put its own dis- tinctive stamp on the fashion. Eastern zoot suiters, for example, preferred much more colorful suits than their western counterparts. All across the country, though, zoot suit culture symbolized excitement, pleasure, and youthful defi- ance of the expectations of parents and wider society. “Like youth of any gen- eration, the zoot suit was a symbol of one’s own generational style,” explained George Sanchez, who came to adulthood in Los Angeles during the zoot suit era. “This was to really assert that, you know, we are here, and we want to make a statement about the fact that we’re here. But it was also, I think, a connection with other minority and poor youth in the United States.”5 As Sanchez indicated, zoot suiters could be found in American working- class neighborhoods of all ethnicities. The outfit was popular with young African Americans on both coasts, as well as Filipino Americans and Japanese Americans along the Pacific Coast. Zoot suits were also sported by Italian Amer- icans and Irish Americans from mixed-race working-class neighborhoods. In the West, though—and especially in Los Angeles—the most visible champions of so-called “zoot suit culture” were young Mexican Americans. Young zoot suiters of Hispanic heritage in Los Angeles offered a variety of reasons for their attraction to the zoot suit lifestyle. Many saw it as a fun and even glamorous escape from the drab reality of their daily existence. For some young men, wrote Pagán, “putting on the zoot [suit] was nothing less than a rebirth of identity, transforming him from an awkward country boy who couldn’t dance to the bezooted hipster who exploded on to the dance floor in the rhythmic fury of the lindy hop.… His zoot was a public signal that he had gone from square to cool, from awkward to hip. He was born a new man.”6 Others saw the zoot suit culture as something that was uniquely their own, a creation that could not be taken away by overbearing parents or racist white authorities. It was a declaration of self-worth by a socioeconomic group that was 46 Defining Moments: The Zoot Suit Riots gone off to fight in the war and mothers who worked long hours to support their families. Yet they had few ways to pass their idle hours in a city that restricted most of its recreational opportunities to white residents.