Paper presented at the 41st Annual Conference of the Western Social Science Association, Fort Worth, Texas, April 23, 1999.

The Zoot Suit Riots occurred in Los Angeles over the course of ten days in June, 1943, as young conscripted American servicemen confronted the so-called "gamin' dandies," young Mexican-Americans whose cultural norms were an affront to the culture of wartime America. This confrontation was carried out with impunity (for the servicemen) and consecrated by the citizenry in general--citizenry which was prepared for combat by the fears raised through two earlier breaches of social order: The "Great Los Angeles Air Raid" and the "Sleepy Lagoon Case" of 1942. Narrative taken from newspaper stories of the time, viewed in light of social dramatic schema, shows the clash of culturally dominant military men (heroes) and a "subordinate and conquered" population (hooligans) was an allowance for American society to define its social experience. This mostly symbolic confrontation afforded the dominant culture an opportunity to negate the incongruity which resulted from a conservative national interest on the one hand and ever-expanding social expectations on the other. The end result--or social transformation--was the ratification of a system of "two-tiered pluralism" in 1940s Los Angeles.

While these campaigns of aggression were being carried out, another campaign of aggression was unfolding--on the streets of Los Angeles. Over the course of ten days in June, tens of thousands of servicemen roamed the streets and sought out confrontation with young civilians in the what has come to be known as The Zoot Suit Riots. Although the riots were peaceful by today's standards--and certainly in comparison to the daily reports of foreign war carnage carried in newspapers and on radio all across America--the riots have come to be known as one of the most historic battles of the decade.⁽³⁾ They've even been categorized as "one of the crimes of the century."⁽⁴⁾

The reason for the significance is simple: The Zoot Suit Riots helped America prepare to vanquish its foreign enemies by first symbolically containing and defeating a perceived "enemy" at home.

In the early years of the 1940s, California was among the most economically prosperous of states. It produced the third largest agricultural crop in the nation, and was in the top three states in crude oil production. California's industry was a key to the nation's successful build-up for war in the months following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Los Angeles mirrored California's economic prosperity. One-fifth of all contracts for construction of war aircraft were held by firms in Southern California. The shipyard in Los Angeles was working $600 million dollars worth of contracts for construction and retrofitting of navy vessels--and was turning out more than a dozen ships a week in the early months of 1942. More than 350,000 people were employed in wartime-related industrial jobs, building ships, aircraft, tanks, and electronic equipment. Los Angeles and its people were "infected with the excitement of war."⁽⁵⁾

In addition to building war equipment, Los Angeles was also a major staging area for U.S. troops. There were half a dozen major military bases and tens of thousands of military men on duty within the city limits or just a short drive outside of downtown Los Angeles. As a consequence, many thousands of servicemen would come into the city in the evenings and on the weekends--to let off steam."⁽⁶⁾ Los Angeles was a growing, productive community before the war. But the hostilities overseas, and the resulting need for more labor on the homefront, added to the growth during the war years.

As a result of the draft, large numbers of young men were unable to fill farm hand and factory labor jobs. The federal government recognized the shortage and initiated the braceros program. The program allowed 4.6 million Mexican nationals to come to the U.S. between 1942 and 1947.⁽⁷⁾

The braceros workers brought their families with them--and helped establish the culture of the pachuco, a youthful individual who was not Mexican and yet not American:

[T]he pachuco represented. . . a Mexican born in the United States; alien to both cultures; fluent in neither Spanish nor English; a specialist in Caló, the argot of lumpen elements--an ideal subject for ethnocentric apologies or chauvinistic attacks.⁽⁸⁾

The pachucos were low-status, blue-collar laborers who did not fit into Anglo America. The White majority viewed the pachucos as "proof of Mexican degeneracy"⁽⁹⁾ as a result of the common perceived social standing of Mexican-Americans.

One large separation between the pachucos and middle-class America resulted from language use. Pachucos did not speak the King's English; they had their own language. A "hispanicized English" slang, the dialect of the pachuco resulted from Mexican-Americans' efforts to blend their native tongue with a dominant English-language culture.⁽¹⁰⁾ Neither English nor Spanish, the language of the pachuco identified the speaker as someone different--in a time when being different was very threatening indeed to the social hierarchy.

Pachucos were further separated from mainstream society as a result of where they lived. Pachucos had their own neighborhoods--barrio communities with dirt streets and shanty homes in the east, southeast, and near southeast sides of Los Angeles.⁽¹¹⁾ These neighborhoods had grown up almost overnight around the major employers upon which the braceros and pachucos depended.⁽¹²⁾ Many of the neighborhoods had no sanitation, running water or other city services.⁽¹³⁾

Like many Hispanic individuals before and since, the pachucos living in the barrio neighborhoods found themselves "hard pressed to establish one single self-identifying label all can accept."⁽¹⁴⁾ As a consequence, these young men (and, occasionally, women) of the barrio formed gangs. The original gangs "were brought into existence by young men who shared a common atmosphere, that of low social status, overcrowded neighborhoods, poor economic conditions, few employment opportunities, minimal parental supervision, ethnic and racial discrimination, and little trust of or from law enforcement officials."⁽¹⁵⁾ Although some have argued that the gangs were made up of "maladjusted" youth,⁽¹⁶⁾ others believe the gangs seldom involved themselves with serious criminal activity or illegal drugs, and that there was little if any actual harm generated in the community from the barrio gangs. "[T]he gang boys of the 1940s," Moore writes, "were interested in most of the same activities that interested other adolescents--sports, dances, and parties."⁽¹⁷⁾

It is also argued that pachucos saw themselves as the descendants of cholos, gypsies and other figures from Spain (the old world) and Mexico (the new world); that they simply were trying to create their own cultural hierarchy. In so doing, they developed a social system that "highlighted coiffure, garb, and select membership."⁽¹⁸⁾

This social system was symbolized by the Zoot Suit.

The Andrews Sisters

As with the pachucos' social order itself, the precise origins of the Zoot Suit are somewhat unclear. The outfit may have been an international phenomenon before it even came to Los Angeles. There is evidence that the suit was worn in London--having been invented by a Seville Row tailor at the close of the nineteenth century. It's also been argued that the Zoot Suit originated in Georgia; that the first Zoot Suit was tailor-made for black bus boy Clyde Duncan, a "stubborn" youth who had the $33 outfit made to resemble Rhett Butler's attire in Gone With the Wind.⁽²⁰⁾

Regardless, the Zoot Suit came to Los Angeles around 1940, where it and those who chose to wear it were met by "anger, shock, and undoubtedly envy" by the adult population. "With their ankle-tight pegged cuffs, reet pleats, peg tops, lids, and DA hairstyles, the zoot-suiters flaunted their disdain for adult conventions with the garish insolence of rebellious youth."⁽²¹⁾

The pachucos in their Zoot Suits were defying convention in a time when it was not safe to buck the majority, symbolically or otherwise. In 1943, most of the western world was embroiled in war. It was a time for commonality of expression. It was a time for mutual dependence; for planned and coordinated action. It was a time for civic-minded responsibility. The Zoot Suit and its wearer represented the antithesis of this public, patriotic sentiment. For some, this was displayed through wearing the Zoot Suit as part of social expression and dance. For others, the clothing served as a declaration of independence. For others the clothing represented a spontaneous youth movement. And for a few, the Zoot Suit may have served "as a disguise for delinquent gang activity."⁽²²⁾

Regardless of each individual's aims, it's easy to see how these young, spontaneous, expressive youth--who had little to bind them together other than the somewhat vague and mysterious culture of the pachuco--became known as "hooligans" and easy prey for sailors and soldiers, our American "heroes" of the 1940s.

Zoot Suit

MCA Motion Picture, 1989

In 1943, there were at least five key military installations within the Los Angeles metropolitan area. The close proximity of these installations to the city opened the door for civil disturbances between the subjugated service men and the zoot-suited "gamin' dandies."⁽²³⁾

On the one hand there were the sailors and servicemen--reared in traditional American homes, drafted into military service, shorn of their clothing, hair, and personal artifacts, training to go to a foreign land to kill people they didn't even know, for a cause they may not have understood. And on the other hand there were the Zoot Suiter pachucos--young, working-class, minority members with different cultural backgrounds, language, and peculiar dress--living free and easy with few uncertainties ahead, a clear affront to what the solders were expected to train for and represent.

The opportunity for conflict between these groups was sharpened as a result of the small physical space keeping them apart. Many of the military installations were located adjacent to barrio neighborhoods, exposing servicemen to a race of people many had "never before been exposed to."⁽²⁴⁾ All the elements existed for there to be a clash of cultures:

The young servicemen, predominantly white, single, in their teens or early twenties, trained for combat, piqued and depressed by the excesses and restraints of military life, enjoyed the immunities of soldiers in a second front--the fight against zoot suiters.⁽²⁵⁾

The Zoot Suit Riots involved a complicated series of events, and, as a consequence, no one framework of analysis can do justice to all the complexities involved. It seems most appropriate to frame the discussion of what happened during these ten days in June, 1943, through an approach that builds from the tenets of social symbolism,⁽²⁶⁾ along with theoretical constructs which allow for interpretation of phenomena as various stages of dramatic conflict within the social order.⁽²⁷⁾

The social-symbolic approach stems from the nature of sharing, something which is a uniquely human capacity--because only humans can create, assign, and share symbolic meanings to define and explain their world. "Sharing creates a single experience that involves all of those who participate in the experience," Fisher wrote. "The "meaning" of the words or actions are quite indeterminate unless and until they are interpreted--not in the psychological sense of individual perceptions but interactionally within the mutuality of the experience itself."⁽²⁸⁾

In other words, the creation of symbols in society allows us "to transcend the limits of time and place, and, thereby provide. . . a sense of history and tradition."⁽²⁹⁾ It allows us to share the experience with others, and "foster the development of a culture among those who share" the symbols.⁽³⁰⁾ Finally, the process allows us to develop cognitive processes for organizing, categorizing and implementing symbolic interpretations.⁽³¹⁾

This approach is interesting, but somewhat limiting--because it's a rather cold, sterile way to conceive of a series of historical events. The Zoot Suit Riots involved real people, acting and reacting individually and collectively in a myriad of ways. It's certainly possible to conceive of all of this symbolically, but it also seems that this framework would exclude some of the subtleties and emotion of the moment--emotion that can't necessarily be transmitted symbolically--that's so important to understanding the issues involved.⁽³²⁾

As a consequence of the temporal complexity of the subject at hand, the clash of symbolic hierarchies known as the Zoot Suit Riots will be illustrated as a social drama which unfolded in four stages--breach, crisis, redress, and transformation. Breach represents the infraction of socially-accepted rules by a group within the public arena; crisis represents overt conflict which results from the breach. Redressive action comes as a consequence of the disruption--as the social hierarchy makes corrective measures to quell the disturbance. Finally, transformation takes place when "[a]fter the conflict has ended, the warring parties either reintegrate or split."⁽³³⁾

Material Breach

The first act in the social drama of the Zoot Suit Riots is clearly the material breach caused by the war years. In 1943, goods and services available to the consuming public were greatly limited. Gasoline was in short supply; pleasure driving was banned in a dozen states.⁽³⁴⁾ Nylon products were unavailable to consumers; paper goods, aluminum products, soap, meat and milk were available only in limited supplies. Every national resource was conscripted either fully or partially for the war effort.

Yet, at the same time, middle-class America was expected to keep up with the "expanding complexity of modern experience." The modern middle class household was "known by the cleanliness, fashion, and quality of its things."⁽³⁵⁾ There's no way the two extremes could have been reconciled. The result was a great breach between what the national interest demanded on the one hand, and what society expected on the other.

The war and its issues dominated public consciousness and intruded into the private domain. Everyone in America had his or her social life disrupted in one way or another by the war. Families were torn apart; men were sent off to fight and die in foreign lands. Government was preoccupied with the task of preparing men and machines for war; people were employed to assist in the effort. There was little opportunity for and no tolerance of public complaining about the unpleasantries of wartime.

Symbolic Breach

In addition to the purely material breach of the social order, there was also a symbolic breach--an infraction of the rules of expected conduct in wartime America. This breach formed when the pachucos in their Zoot Suits took to the streets--to personalize their glaring and garish affront to the symbolism of material sacrifice developed during the late '30s and early years of the '40s.

While the traditional business suit had "changed little since the rise of the commercial middle class. . . because its very stability of form suggests a stability of the business world."⁽³⁶⁾ This stability was threatened by the Zoot Suit. The suits and their wearers "challenged the hegemony of the dominant culture"⁽³⁷⁾ by de-stabilizing the symbolic tradition of American male attire. This de-stabilization contributed to the perception that Zoot Suiters were attempting to change the social order--a very threatening perception indeed during war years when everything the nation did was intended to support the social order.

The Zoot Suiters' haircuts, personal freedom (in a time when so many young men had no personal freedom), and closeness to family ties (in a time when so many men were uprooted from home and families) also were strong symbolic threats.

An additional threat to the established order was the continuing perception that Zoot Suiters were "members of the Mexican colony", "Mexican", "colored", or "[a] disturbing element" in society.⁽³⁸⁾ Mainstream America simply did not allow itself to recognize Mexican-Americans (or Blacks) in general, or the Zoot Suiters in specific, as individuals or as Americans. There was no public recognition of the "significant contribution" of the braceros to the war effort.⁽³⁹⁾

Though it has been claimed the Zoot Suiters dressed in their "uniform[s] of their adolescence" to "compensate for a tormenting sense of inferiority,"⁽⁴⁰⁾ the mainstream public never looked deeper than outward appearances. Instead of seeing Zoot Suiters and military men as the standard-bearers of two dissimilar cultural hierarchies, the public saw only a conflict between patriotic fighting men and a "fringe group of maladjusted youth."⁽⁴¹⁾

The Crisis

Two distinct occurrences can be identified as precursors to crisis--as elements which caused the material and symbolic breach in the social order to erupt into conflict.

The first was the "Great Los Angeles Air Raid" of February 26, 1942. The "raid" followed an incident the evening before, in which an offshore Japanese submarine was said to have shelled an oilfield near Santa Barbara. As darkness fell in Los Angeles on the night of February 26, an Army alert was issued: Los Angeles was under air attack! Searchlights scanned the skies for hours; anti-aircraft batteries fired hundreds of rounds into the night sky. "No enemy airplanes were hit, but at least two houses were badly damaged, many windows were smashed, and two civilians were killed by cars during the blackout," Life magazine reported.⁽⁴²⁾ In the same article, the war secretary is quoted as saying that at least 15 planes were involved and that "they might have been private planes operated by enemy agents." Within hours, the Los Angeles County Sheriff and the FBI had arrested numerous Japanese gardeners and nurserymen for allegedly signaling the incoming planes. Although Angelinos most certainly did conduct an "air raid" that night, it's extremely questionable whether there were any Japanese planes in the sky. The "air attack" appears to have been a falsehood.⁽⁴³⁾

The illusion of being under attack, though, was very real. It served as a "powerful rallying symbol" for Los Angeles residents, showing them that they, personally, could "now claim to have known the enemy in combat."⁽⁴⁴⁾ Angelinos knew that they were ready for war--because they proved that they could fight it right here at home.

The second precursor to crisis was the Sleepy Lagoon case, involving the murder of a Mexican-American man in Los Angeles in August, 1942. The case highlighted the popular perception that Mexican-Americans were "a tainted people condemned to racial inferiority and social and economic marginality."⁽⁴⁵⁾ The case concerned 17 Mexican-American adolescents who were brought to trial (after an initial group of several hundred suspects was questioned). The 17 were tried before a biased and prejudiced judge, subsequently convicted of murder, and sent to prison.⁽⁴⁶⁾

The defendants in the Sleepy Lagoon case were freed in 1944 by the California Court of Criminal Appeals--for lack of evidence to support their convictions. Still, the publicity of the trial and the verdicts made a clear statement to the general public in California: Mexican-American youth symbolized criminality and public nuisance. This symbolism is affirmed by the fact that Sleepy Lagoon itself was publicly identified as a "zoot suit gang hangout" and closed by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. A newspaper account of the action indicated that the old gravel pit lake "will be fenced, there will be husky guards on duty, and zooters will have to go elsewhere to have their battles."⁽⁴⁷⁾

The effect of the "Great Los Angeles Air Raid" and the Sleepy Lagoon convictions was that Los Angeles residents saw they were ready for battle. They had a cause--upholding and strengthening the social order. They had an enemy--the Zoot Suiters. They had preparation--the great "air raid." And they had evidence to indict--the conviction of the Sleepy Lagoon defendants as "a threat to American security."⁽⁴⁸⁾

On June 3, 1943, the battle began.

The jitterbug Mexican-American youth, who looked upon the zoot suit as his mark of style distinction and group security, had become the chief adversary of servicemen and a threat to local civilians.⁽⁴⁹⁾

The triggering event for the riots followed an evening community meeting called by police to discuss the eradication of neighborhood delinquency. Citing Carey McWilliams' book North from Mexico, Mazon details how pachuco boys from the Alpine Club had attended this crime prevention meeting at a local police station. On their way home, they were attacked and beaten. Although it's not clear whether McWilliams believes police officers were directly involved, McWilliams does attribute the beating to a "vengeance squad" which had earlier attacked a group of Navy men, reportedly to "mobilize anti-Mexican feelings" among servicemen and in the community as a whole.⁽⁵⁰⁾

Griffith pegs the incident a little differently. As do McWilliams and Mazon, she believes there was a conspiracy against the Zoot Suiters. But Griffith contends that the conspiracy was carried out by the military. She claims that guards at the Chavez Ravine Armory "looked the other way" as sailors walked out of the armory that night, armed with sticks, rocks, and clubs to go to the Alpine neighborhood--because "it was high time something was done."⁽⁵¹⁾

In fact, Griffith argues that preparation for the initial attack had been ongoing for some time prior to the evening of June 3. "Taxis carrying individual sailors began to "case" the Mexican community in east Los Angeles for a week before the riots," she writes, "reconnoitering that later proved effective in establishing the battle map for the riots. The determination voiced by the attacking sailors. . . "Let's get 'em," was soon accompanied by the familiar race-riot slogan, "They raped our wives!"⁽⁵²⁾

The local newspapers initially did not pick up on the story. In fact, the Los Angeles Times did not report on the fighting until June 6, three days into the disturbances. When the newspapers did start reporting on the rioting, "civilians began to join servicemen in chasing, stripping, and occasionally beating zoot-suiters or non-zoot-suit-wearing Mexican-Americans and blacks."⁽⁵³⁾ According to one later account, "[F]ighting between American sailors and zoot suiters often led to unprovoked attacks on anyone who looked like a Mexican."⁽⁵⁴⁾

Although no one was killed and there were no reports of serious property damage, the riots quickly became a sensation. Thousands of people combed the streets of the downtown sector on the evenings of June 9 through 13, as the disturbances reached their peak. Certainly the accelerating level of acerbity in headlines and stories about the riots in the Los Angeles Times must have been a contributing factor:

"Zoot Suiters Learn Lesson in Fights With Servicemen" (June 7)

"Riot Alarm Sent Out in Zoot War" (June 8)

"Zoot-Suit Fans Find Out That Life's Getting Tough" (June 8)

"City, Navy, Clamp Lid on Zoot-Suit Warfare" (June 9)

"Warren Orders Zoot Quiz; Quiet Reigns After Rioting" (June 10)

"Brass Knuckles Found on Woman Zoot Suiter" (June 10)

"Ban on Freak Suits Studied by Councilmen" (June 10)

"Zooters Escape San Diego Mob" (June 10)

"Punishment of All Urged to Break Up Zoot Suit War" (June 13)

The New York Times was equally unkind, describing Mexicans as "zoot-suited ruffians. . . teenage hoodlums which had made the reat pleat and stuff cuff the mark of the outlaw."⁽⁵⁵⁾ As with the Los Angeles paper, the New York Times tended to show more of an order-authority orientation in its coverage, emphasizing manifestations of the discontent rather than getting into the causes of the strife. The New York paper supported the mainstream opinion that Zoot Suiters were being put in their place. Captured Zoot Suiters "languished behind bars. . . subdued and no longer ready to go into battle. . . [having been] stripped of their garish clothing," a Times account crowed.⁽⁵⁶⁾

Redressive mechanisms are put in place by society in an attempt to "contain crisis and move the struggling factions into reintegration of schism."⁽⁵⁷⁾ A number of temporary and long-term redressive measures were attempted as the Zoot Suit Riots reached their crescendo; none was overwhelmingly successful.

The military command faced a difficult decision. It could look the other way while its military men took out their frustrations on an already publicly disdained and disempowered minority group; or, it could order a halt to the disturbances, suffer through the consequences of this breakdown in military discipline, and try to avert an obvious propaganda advantage the Axis powers would recoup as a result.

In many respects, the military felt the police were unable to deal with the situation, as there had been reports of police "negligence in the face of threats to Mexicans and blacks by servicemen."⁽⁵⁸⁾ On June 8, the city was placed "off limits" by the military, and on June 11, a memo was issued from Southern California Sector, U.S. Army Western Defense Command, threatening disciplinary action against military men who participated in additional disturbances of the peace. These actions helped return order to the streets by returning the military men to their bases.

For their part, the newspapers tried valiantly to support the mainstream social hierarchy and its subjugation of the Zoot Suiters. The Los Angeles Times did not even pick up on the riot story until June 6; and from that point on, the Times strongly supported 'law and order' ideals. Its articles were sympathetic to the police and the military community; photos of military men and police featured those individuals as bandaged and beaten victims. Photos of Zoot Suiters, on the other hand, showed the "rowdy element"⁽⁵⁹⁾ as vanquished by the authorities. The one "woman zoot suiter" portrayed in the Times is shown to be rendered powerless--even though she's photographed holding up a clenched fist in defiance. The woman, Mrs. Amelia Venegas, 22, was said to have been arrested by police whom she "cursed" for questioning a group of zoot suiters near her home. The cutline under the large, two-column wide jailhouse photo explains that the scowling Mrs. Venegas was carrying an infant--and brass knuckles--at the time of her arrest. Interestingly enough, though she's called a "woman zoot suiter" in the narrative, Mrs. Venegas' photo shows her to be wearing a housedress.⁽⁶⁰⁾

The same type of disdain for the low-status individuals and support for the mainstream hierarchy can be found in the accounts of the rioting from the New York Times and Life, both of which emphasized the conflict between authorities in power and disempowered individuals and small groups.

Although she does not specifically address the Los Angeles rioting, Huck believes the national news media, as a whole, espoused prejudicial "southern mores"⁽⁶¹⁾ and shared a "deeply ambivalent" feeling⁽⁶²⁾ about riots carried out in 1943 in Detroit; New York City; Mobile, Alabama, and other communities. Riot coverage "reflected or reproduced the forties feeling of [social] insecurity," she writes.⁽⁶³⁾ Instead of linking rioting with national bigotry at a time when the social hierarchy supported forced labor camps and other deprivations of rights for American minority groups, the news coverage tied the riots to hot weather, overcrowding and general "social conditions" present in many American urban centers.⁽⁶⁴⁾

An important effort to bring redress also came about through the publication of the "Zoot Suit Yokum" series in the comic strip Li'l Abner. One of the more popular comics of the time, Li'l Abner, drawn by Al Capp, was read by as many as 50 million people every day. It was the first successful humorous comic strip concerned with political and social satire⁽⁶⁵⁾ and reflected "the three great interests of man. . . death, love, and power."⁽⁶⁶⁾ The cartoon strip was designed to "create suspicion of, and disrespect for, the perfection of all established institutions," Capp said in 1964. "My job is to keep reminding people that they must not be content with anything."⁽⁶⁷⁾

The "Zoot Suit Yokum" segments which ran in the comic strip between April 11 and May 23, 1943 introduced Americans "to the perils of zoot-suiterism" by portraying a conspiracy among clothing manufacturers to take over the country economically and politically through the manufacture and distribution of Zoot Suits. It then goes on to show how the manufacturers hire a scapegoat, Li'l Abner, to help sell their suits. This "Zoot Suit Yokum" starts out a hero, and, after several bizarre plot twists and turns, ends up as a scoundrel.

The "Zoot Suit Yokum" chapter is a gripping precursor of the symbolic developments that typified the riots. The splitting of images into antipodal frames--life/death, patriotism/disloyalty, annihilation/regeneration, innocence/corruption, and hero/villain--anticipated the themes that servicemen and civilians reenacted throughout the Zoot-Suit Riots.⁽⁶⁸⁾

"Zoot Suit Yokum" offered an excellent example of wartime media "control of public opinion through simplistic imagery"⁽⁶⁹⁾ while explaining to the masses how the powerful can misuse their power. Ironically, in also ended up being a case of life imitating art. In the concluding segments of the "Zoot Suit Yokum" adventures, Zoot Suits are publicly banned by a state governor, a jury acquits a woman who kills her "Zoot-Suit hating husband," and the last Zoot Suit factory goes bankrupt as "Zoot-Suit hating mobs continue to smash up a Zoot-Suit store."⁽⁷⁰⁾ In the concluding days of the Zoot Suit Riots in Los Angeles, the City Council deemed Zoot Suits a public nuisance and banned individuals from wearing such attire within the city limits.⁽⁷¹⁾ A statewide ban was considered.

Later in 1943, California Governor Earl Warren formed a citizens committee to investigate the origins of the rioting. Certainly some of the rationale for establishing the "Civilian Citizens Committee" must have been symbolic, to make it appear as if the California and U.S. governments were doing something to keep their internal labor force productive. The Mexican government was concerned about the effect of the Los Angeles riots on the treatment of braceros in California and the Northwest, and the California governor probably wanted to make it appear to the Mexican government and to the public at large that something was being done to prevent further disturbances.⁽⁷²⁾

After months of meetings and investigation, the committee reported that "there was racial prejudice, police harassment and brutality, and a lack of housing, employment, and recreation facilities."⁽⁷³⁾ But the committee neglected to give much attention at all to the roles played by Anglo civilians and servicemen in initiating the disturbances in the first place. Governor Warren reviewed the findings and concluded that the origin of the riots was "juvenile delinquency."⁽⁷⁴⁾

The Transformation

The Zoot Suit Riots constituted an effort by different social groups to bring order to a world that seemed beyond anyone's control. The pachucos wanted to establish a place for themselves in American society. Since they viewed themselves as neither Mexican nor American, their Zoot Suits, ducktail haircuts, linguistic behaviors and group culture gave them an identity that they needed. This symbolism offered something to separate the pachucos from their parents' braceros heritage and their Anglo neighbors' unfamiliar traditions.

The soldiers and sailors who engaged in the ten days of disturbances were seeking to "define an experience that was otherwise irreducibly chaotic, fragmented, and emotionally unassimilable."⁽⁷⁵⁾ These men were in California preparing for war. They had been uprooted from their families, homes and communities. Their habitual activity had been frustrated. They responded to that frustration by doing what they were being trained to do--fight. They struck back in a very predictable way, at a very convenient enemy. They were not looking to kill anyone; they were simply striking back at an ostentatious target which, in the servicemens' eyes, was the source of their frustration: those "gamin' dandies"--the Zoot Suiters.⁽⁷⁶⁾

A result of the Zoot Suit Riots was the continued support of a social system whereby members of the ethnic minority in Los Angeles were seen--but not heard or recognized as part of a whole community.

The popular culture of the early 1940s was one in which the public participated in wartime sacrifice and community effort for the common good. Behavioral norms were established and followed to the letter. There was no social tolerance for the contradictory symbolism of the pachucos and their Zoot Suits. The end result of the ten days of rioting was the continued tacit support of what's been defined as "two-tiered pluralism"--"a situation in which there is formal legal equality on the one hand, and, simultaneously, actual practice that undercuts equality for most members of minority groups, even if some individuals register significant improvements.⁽⁷⁸⁾

In such instances, "equality is largely formal or procedural, not substantive" because members of the ethnic minority have little real political power. Minority group members are much more likely to be forced to deal through "mediating institutions" as they try to obtain the political power they seek and deserve.⁽⁷⁹⁾

In examining the record of the Zoot Suit Riots, it's clear that the above is an accurate depiction of the social situation before the riots, as well as afterward. Even today, more than fifty years later, the Mexican-American community is still struggling to find its place in the political mainstream. Members of the Mexican-American community (and members of other minority groups, for that matter), feel that they are "subordinate and conquered populations" who must go through mediating institutions to "achieve a modicum of equality, to realize equal opportunity."⁽⁸⁰⁾

Writer Daniel Wood looked at the social and cultural climate of Los Angeles, one year after the devastating riots of 1992. "From the rubble of the riots," he writes, "a parade of politicians called for no less than the rebirth of the American city."⁽⁸¹⁾ Unfortunately, Los Angeles has changed little as a result of the uprising of the underclass. Wood's article quotes a U.S. Senator and the executive director of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, both of whom agree that nothing has changed. Federal and state government assistance alone is not enough to bring about the improved economic conditions that foster change in people's lives. It's Wood's belief that change will not come to the urban areas, and positively affect the minority members living there, until a national economic surge is strong enough to reach those sectors buried deep within the economic strata of the country.

Many variables limit our ability to effectively analyze a series of events as complicated as those which led up to the Zoot Suit Riots. The first, and most obvious is personal subjectivity. Having not lived through World War II, it is difficult for the author to perceive phenomena at the same level of understanding as people for whom the wartime experience was real, personal experience.

The framework under which analysis is done also is limiting--it by nature defines which "facts" will be selected for inclusion, and which will not--as well as how those "facts" will be addressed.

Had a historical analysis format been chosen, for example, it's likely that the Zoot Suit Riots would have been analyzed from a historical perspective, to take a more detailed look at the riots' place in American history. A narrative perspective might have followed in the footsteps of Mazon, to examine the correspondence and other public and private narratives created by individuals involved. There are numerous other perspectives which could have been chosen. The approach which was selected was the one the author felt best conceptualized the Zoot Suit Riots in terms of their symbolism and affect upon people in the social arena of Los Angeles at a decisive time in the American experience.

Another distinct limitation comes from simply attempting an analysis using narrative accounts of an event. By the very fact that they were created, narratives give legitimacy to action; the narrative accounts of the riots give fidelity to the riots and the rioters. In 1987, W.F. Fisher wrote that the success of political narratives in America depends greatly upon the narratives' consistency "with the story of America."⁽⁸²⁾ Certainly the narratives of Zoot Suiters and servicemen in conflict are in congruence with what society deemed to be "the story of America" in the early 1940s. Consequently, these stories achieve legitimacy on that basis alone for re-telling here, while narratives unlike "the story of America" do not.

Along those same lines, there is, finally, the overall anomaly of world war that casts an entirely different light over any effort to make sense of people's actions. During the first half of the 1940s, unlike any time period before or since, the attention of almost the entire population of the globe was directed toward a campaign of carnage. Society furnished undivided temporal focus and directed its complete emotional response to the war effort. Day after day, week after week, for months and years on end, the public consciousness focused on the symbolic precursors of success and failure sewn by society here at home, and borne by our representatives on battlefields thousands of miles away. As a result of the unique consequences which result from this kind of a social situation, it is difficult if not impossible to create an objective point of reference for a particular event such as the Zoot Suit Riots. There's simply no comparison.

But, perhaps that's what makes the Zoot Suit Riots such an interesting case to study. There's simply no comparison to anything before or since.

NOTES

1. "Over 600 Nisei at Poston Found Openly Disloyal," Los Angeles Times, 9 June 1943, p. 1.

2. Lorania K. Francis, "Surprise Japanese Attack on America Declared Near," Los Angeles Times, 9 June 1943, p. 1.

3. For an extensive look at the Zoot Suit Riots through personal testimony, letters and other narratives of the time period, see Mark Mazon, The Zoot-Suit Riots: The Psychology of Symbolic Annihilation (Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 1984).

4. Lewis H. Gann and Peter J. Duignan, The Hispanics in the United States (Boulder, Col., Westview Press, 1986), p. 61.

5. See "The West At War," Life, 12 October 1942, p. 107.

6. From an incomplete citation attributed to James Jones, WWII (New York), in Mazon, The Zoot-Suit Riots, p. 104.

7. For a more extensive portrait of the program, see H. P. Anderson, The Bracero Program in California (New York: Arno Press, 1976); Gann and Duignan The Hispanics in the United States; and Rodney E. Hero, Latinos and the U.S. Political System: Two-tiered Pluralism (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992).

8. Mazon, The Zoot-Suit Riots, p. 5.

9. Mazon, The Zoot-Suit Riots, p. 5.

10. Beatrice Griffith, American Me (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1948), p. 55.

11. Joan W. Moore and others, Homeboys: Gangs, Drugs, and Prison in the Barrios of Los Angeles (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1978).

12. R. Santillan, "Styles and Strategies" in Latinos and the Political System ed. F. Chris Garcia (South Bend, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988), pp. 467-479.

13. Moore, Homeboys, 1978.

14. A. B. Rendon, "Latinos: Breaking the Cycle of Survival to Tackle Global Affairs" in Latinos and the Political System, ed. F. Chris Garcia, p. 458.

15. Milton Paddlety, "Los Angeles, Today's Hispanic Gang Member: A Closer Look in the 1990s" (Unpublished manuscript, 1993), p. 2.

16. Griffith, American Me, p. x.

17. Moore, Homeboys, p. 59.

18. Mazon, The Zoot-Suit Riots, p. 5.

19. "Zoot-Suit Fighting Spreads on Coast," New York Times, 10 June 1943, p.23.

20. Mark Berger, "Zoot Suit Originated in Georgia; Bus Boy Ordered First One in '40," New York Times, 10 June 1943, p. 21.

21. See Mazon, The Zoot-Suit Riots, p. 7.

22. See Griffith, American Me, p. 48 for a description of four categories of zoot suit wearers as attributed to an October, 1943, article by Fritz Redl.

23. "Zoot Suiters Learn Lesson in Fights with Servicemen," Los Angeles Times, 7 June 1943, p. 1.

24. Mazon, The Zoot-Suit Riots, p. 68.

25. Mazon, The Zoot-Suit Riots, p. 58.

26. See Kenneth Burke, Language as Symbolic Action (Los Angeles: UCLA Press, 1966); and B. Aubrey Fisher, Perspectives on Human Communication (New York: MacMillan, 1978).

27. See Karen Huck, "The Arsenal on Fire: The Reader in the Riot, 1943," Critical Studies in Mass Communication 10 (1993): 23-48; and Victor W. Turner, Drama, Fields, and Metaphors (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1974).

28. Fisher, Perspectives on Human Communication, p. 185.

29. Craig Allen Smith, Political Communication (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1990), p. 10.

30. Smith, Political Communication, p. 10.

31. See also Dan Nimmo and James E. Combs, Mediated Political Realities (New York: Longman Press, 1983).

32. The major work on this subject is Mazon, The Zoot-Suit Riots. Though it was relied upon extensively for the preparation of this analysis, Mazon's book does have limitations. It purports to take a symbolic approach, but reads more like a narrative account. It relies mainly upon testimony from people involved, letters, and documents to explain the riots. There's little attention given the symbolic representations--including newspaper narratives and photos--which this author feels are critical if we're to understand the riots and their significance.

33. Huck, "The Arsenal on Fire," p. 26.

34. "Entire Nation Facing Ban on Pleasure Driving," Los Angeles Times, 8 June 1943, p. 1.

35. Huck, "The Arsenal on Fire," p. 41.

36. Elanor N. Patton and Bobby R. Patton, "Gender Significance of Dress in the Organizational Setting" (Paper delivered at the annual meeting of the Central States Speech Association, Indianapolis, Ind., 4 April 1985).

37. William Graebner, "Zoot Suits in Buffalo: Clothing and Style in a Folk Subculture," Chronicle of Higher Education, 15 August 1990, p. 44.

38. "Warren Orders Zoot Quiz; Quiet Reigns After Rioting," Los Angeles Times, 10 June 1943, p. 1. See also Porfirio Sanchez, "The Chicano and the Black Legend" (Educational Resources and Information Center Document No. ED 262 938, 1984).

39. Eric Gamboa, Mexican Labor and World War II, 1942-1947 (Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 1990).

40. Griffith, American Me, p. 48.

41. Griffith, American Me, p. x.

42. "Japanese Carry War to California Coast," Life, 9 March 1942, pp. 19-23.

43. The events surrounding the "Great Los Angeles Air Raid" are chronicled in Mazon, The Zoot-Suit Riots, and in "Japanese Carry War," Life, 9 March 1942. There is virtually no evidence to verify that the Richfield Oil Company facility north of Los Angeles was shelled by a Japanese submarine.

44. Mazon, The Zoot-Suit Riots, p. 17.

45. Mazon, The Zoot-Suit Riots, p. 22-23.

46. For additional details, see Mazon, The Zoot-Suit Riots.

47. "Zoot Suiters to Lose One of Hangouts," Los Angeles Times, 9 June 1943, p. 2.

48. Mazon, The Zoot-Suit Riots, p. 25.

49. Griffith, American Me, p. 17.

50. See Mazon, The Zoot-Suit Riots, p. 70, for the incomplete citation referring to Carey McWilliams, North From Mexico (Philadelphia, 1949) in which McWilliams uses the term "vengeance squad" and Mazon states that the anticipated outcome of this purported unit was to "mobilize anti-Mexican feelings."

51. Griffith, American Me, p. 20.

52. Griffith, American Me, p. 19.

53. Mazon, The Zoot-Suit Riots, p. 75.

54. Gann and Duignan, The Hispanics in the United States, p. 61.

55. The type of rhetorical 'good guys vs. bad guys' narrative featured in "Zoot-Suit Fighting Spreads on Coast," New York Times, 10 June 1943, p. 23 and other articles of the time period is not unusual for newspaper coverage of rioting. See George Silvie, "Study of a Riot: The Effect of News Values and Competition on Coverage by Two Competing Daily Newspapers" (Paper delivered at the Seventy-Second Annual Meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, Washington, D. C., 10 August 1989).

56. "28 Zoot Suiters Seized on Coast After Clashes With Servicemen," New York Times, 7 June 1943, p. 15.

57. Huck, "The Arsenal on Fire," p. 39.

58. Mazon, The Zoot-Suit Riots, p. 76.

59. "City, Navy Clamp Lid on Zoot-Suit Warfare," Los Angeles Times, 9 June 1943, pp.1-2.

60. "Brass Knuckles Found on Woman Zoot Suiter," Los Angeles Times, 10 June 1943, p. 2.

61. Huck, "The Arsenal on Fire," p. 39.

62. Huck, "The Arsenal on Fire," p. 24.

63. Huck, "The Arsenal on Fire," p. 23.

64. Huck, "The Arsenal on Fire," p. 29.

65. Kalman Goldstein, "Al Capp and Walt Kelly: Pioneers of Political and Social Satire in the Comics," Journal of Popular Culture 25 (1992): 81-95.

66. David White, From Dogpatch to Slobbovia: The World of Li'l Abner (Boston: Beacon Press, 1964) (not paginated).

67. White, From Dogpatch to Slobbovia, (not paginated).

68. Mazon, The Zoot-Suit Riots, p. 53.

69. Goldstein, "Al Capp and Walt Kelly," p. 53.

70. Mazon, The Zoot-Suit Riots, p. 47.

71. "Ban on Freak Suits Studied by Councilmen," Los Angeles Times, 10 June 1943, p. 2.

72. Gamboa, Mexican Labor and World War II, p. 114.

73. Mazon, The Zoot-Suit Riots, p. 99.

74. Mazon, The Zoot-Suit Riots, p. 99.

75. Mazon, The Zoot-Suit Riots, p. 121.

76. "Zoot Suiters Learn Lesson in Fights With Servicemen," Los Angeles Times, 7 June 1943, p. 1.

77. Arthur A. Berger, Agitpop: Political Culture and Communication Theory (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1990).

78. Rodney Hero, Latinos and the U.S. Political System: Two-Tiered Pluralism (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990), p. 189.

79. Hero, Latinos and the U.S. Political System, p. 189.

80. Hero, Latinos and the U.S. Political System, p. 5, 204.

81. Daniel B. Wood, "A Year After the Los Angeles Riots, Few Beacons of Hope in U.S. Cities," Christian Science Monitor, 28 April 1993, p. 1, 4.

82. Fisher, Perspectives on Human Communication, p. 156.