Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-skm99 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-27T22:18:44.038Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Los Angeles Geopolitics and the Zoot Suit Riot, 1943

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Eduardo Obregón Pagán
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In the early evening of 3 June 1943, just as the sun set over a city darkened by a blackout, about 50 sailors stationed at the Naval Reserve Training School in Los Angeles stormed through the mostly Mexican American neighborhoods that lay between the school andd owntown L.A. Their actions that night, which consistedm ostly of stripping zoot suits off young civilian men, set off more than a week of rioting as thousands of military personnel poured into Los Angeles from the surrounding bases and attacked anyone wearing zoot suits. The Los Angeles Police Department did nothing to stop the rioting servicemen, claiming that they lacked jurisdictional authority, and instead jailed hundreds of young men (mostly Mexican American but also black and white) “for their own protection.” It was not until the Army and Navy commanders in southern California took seriously the difference between “revelry” and riot and canceled military leave that the rioting stopped.

Type
Articles
Information
Social Science History , Volume 24 , Issue 1: Special Issue: The Working Classes and Urban Public Space , spring 2000 , pp. 223 - 256
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 2000 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

References

Collections

Alice Greenfield McGrath Papers, Special Collections, University Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles.Google Scholar
National Archives Pacific Southwest Region. Records of the Naval Districts and Shore Establishments, 11th Naval District Headquarters, San Diego, RG 181. Records of the Commandant’s Office, Correspondence Files 1921-47, file P8-5 1942 [2/2]; P8-5 1943 [1/4], [3/4].Google Scholar
Eduardo Quevedo Papers, M349, Special Collections, Green Library, Stanford University.Google Scholar
Manuel Ruíz Papers 295, Special Collections, Green Library, Stanford University.Google Scholar
Sleepy Lagoon Defense Committee Papers, Special Collections, University Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles.Google Scholar

Books, Articles, and Other Published Material

Acuña, R. (1972) Occupied America: The Chicano’s Struggle towards Liberation. San Francisco: Canfield Press.Google Scholar
Banay, R. (1944) “A psychiatrist looks at the zoot suit.” Probation 22(3):81–5.Google Scholar
Bederman, G. (1995) Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880-1917. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Berube, A. (1990) Coming Out under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women in World War II. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Davenport, W. (1942) “Swing it, swing shift!” Collier’s 110(8):24–30.Google Scholar
Dieppa, I. (1973) “The zoot-suit riots revisited: The role of private philanthropy in youth problems of Mexican-Americans.” Ph.D. diss., University of Southern California.Google Scholar
Domer, M. (1955) “The zoot-suit riot: A culmination of social tensions in Los Angeles.” M.A. thesis, Claremont Graduate School.Google Scholar
DuVall, E. W. (1936) “A sociological study of five hundred under-privileged children.” Ph.D. diss., University of Southern California.Google Scholar
Godlewska, A., and Smith, N., eds. (1994)Geography and Empire. Oxford, U.K.: Black-well Publishers.Google Scholar
Gomes, G. M. (1973) “Violence on the home front: The 1943 Los Angeles ‘zoot suit’ riots.” M.A. thesis, University of California, Davis.Google Scholar
Gonzalez, A. G. (1981) “Mexicano/Chicano gangs in Los Angeles: A sociohistorical case study.” Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley.Google Scholar
Griffith, B. W. (1947) “Who are the pachucos?” Pacific Spectator 3:1, 352–60.Google Scholar
Griffith, B. W. (1948) American Me. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar
Harrod, M. L. (1939) “A study of deviate personalities as found in Main Street of Los Angeles.” M.A. thesis, University of Southern California.Google Scholar
Himes, C. B. (1943) “Zoot riots are race riots.” Crisis 50(7).Google Scholar
Kelley, R. D. G. (1993) “‘We are not what we seem’: Rethinking black working-class opposition in the Jim Crow South.”Journal of American History 80:86–88.Google Scholar
Leonard, K. A. (1992) “Years of hope, days of fear: The impact of World War II on race relations in Los Angeles.” Ph.D. diss., University of California, Davis.Google Scholar
McGrath, A. G. (1987) The Education of Alice McGrath. Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
McWilliams, C. (1948) North from Mexico: The Spanish-Speaking People of the United States. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott.Google Scholar
Mazón, M. (1976) “Social upheaval in World War II: ‘Zoot-Suiters’ and servicemen in Los Angeles, 1943.”Ph.D. diss., University of California, Los Angeles.Google Scholar
Mazón, M. (1984) The Zoot-Suit Riots: The Psychology of Symbolic Annihilation. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Morín, P. (1963) Among the Valiant: Mexican-Americans in WWII and Korea. Los Angeles: Borden Publishing.Google Scholar
Romo, R. (1983) East Los Angeles: History of a Barrio. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Shevky, E., and Williams, M. (1949) The Social Areas of Los Angeles. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Sleepy Lagoon Defense Committee (1944) The Sleepy Lagoon Mystery. Los Angeles: Sleepy Lagoon Defense Committee.Google Scholar
Smith, G., and Otero, G. (1985) Teaching about Cultural Awareness. Denver: University of Denver Press.Google Scholar
Smith, S. J. (1981) “Negative interaction: Crime in the inner city,” in Jackson, P. and Smith, S. J. (eds.) Social Interaction and Ethnic Segregation. London: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Sorrell, V. A. (1991) “Articulate signs of resistance and affirmation in Chicano public art,” in del Castillo, R.Griswoldx , McKenna, T., Yarbro-Bejarano, Y. (eds.) Chicano Art: Resistance and Affirmation, 1965-1985. Los Angeles: Wight Art Gallery: 16–24.Google Scholar
United States Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census. (1942) Sixteenth Census of the United States, 1940. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
Wells-Barnett, I. B. (1969) On Lynchings: Southern Horrors, a Red Record, Mob Rule in New Orleans. New York: Arno Press.Google Scholar
Williamson, J. (1984) The Crucible of Race: Black-White Relations in the American South since Emancipation. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Workers of the Writer’s Program of the Works Projects Administration in Southern California (1941) Los Angeles: A Guide to the City and Its Environs. New York: Hastings House.Google Scholar