The Zoot Suit Riots

By 1943 the Los Angeles press had spent a year describing Mexican American young people as a criminal menace, helped by the mass trial of twenty-two youths over the death of José Díaz at the Sleepy Lagoon reservoir - convictions later thrown out on appeal for want of evidence and for the judge's open hostility.

On 3 June 1943 sailors on leave began attacking young Mexican American men in downtown Los Angeles and East Los Angeles. Over the following week crowds of servicemen, joined by civilians, moved through the city by taxi and streetcar, pulling youths out of cinemas and off trams, beating them and tearing off the zoot suits that had become a marker of Mexican American and Black youth style. Police generally arrived after the attacks, and arrested the people who had been beaten: around 500 Latino youths were taken into custody, and almost no servicemen. Black and Filipino youths were attacked as well.

The Los Angeles City Council responded by making it a crime to wear a zoot suit. A committee appointed by Governor Earl Warren found that the violence was rooted in racial prejudice and had been inflamed by the newspapers - and that it was not caused by the victims. The military finally ended it by declaring the city off-limits to servicemen.