Fashion Choices That Caused Riots
Zoot suits took American youth culture by storm in the late 1930s and early 1940s. The outsized suits stood out with their eye catching look, of a long coat with wide lapels and broad shoulder pads. Baggy, tight cuffed, and high waisted pants accompanied the coat, as did pointy French style shoes, plus a watch chain dangling from the belt to the knees, then back to a side pocket. Finally, a color coordinated fedora, sometimes sporting a long feather, completed the ensemble.
The distinctive suits made their first appearances in African American communities in Harlem, Chicago, and Detroit, before crossing over and becoming popular with the rest of America as part of the emerging jazz culture. In addition to African Americans, zoot suits became a huge hit with young Latinos, Filipinos, and Italian Americans. The outfit was sported by many young whites, but there was always an “ethnic” aura about zoot suits that made it problematic for much of the white mainstream.
The elaborate outfits were luxury items, requiring significant tailoring and materials to produce. Upon America’s entry into WWII, the US War Production Board singled out zoot suits for criticism, as being wasteful of materials and production time. The youngsters sporting the outfits saw them as expressions of their freedom and individuality, or even rebelliousness. Others, however, saw them unpatriotic extravagances during wartime. When Life magazine ran an article about youngsters in zoots 1942, it concluded that the outfits “were solid arguments for lowering the Army draft age to include 18-year-olds“. Other media outfits followed suit, with sensational accounts that often exaggerated the suits’ actual cost.
Before long, a backlash had built up against the outfits. Youngsters in zoot suits were frequently berated and verbally assailed in public, and sometimes physically attacked. Police would often stop people wearing the suits, and sometimes slash them into ruin. The most dramatic manifestation of the backlash, however, took place in Los Angeles in June of 1943, in what came to be known as the Zoot Suit Riots.
It began a year earlier, when local newspapers whipped up racial tensions with sensationalist reporting on a “crime wave” that existed only in the newspapers’ imagination, that was supposedly caused by Mexican-American youths. Before long, there was a full blown media campaign, demanding that the authorities crack down on the “zoot suiters”. The city’s law enforcement reacted by conducting frequent roundups, in which hundreds of Mexican-American youths, guilty of nothing more than wearing oversized suits, were arrested.
During WWII, LA became a major military hub, as hundreds of thousands of servicemen were stationed there or passed through en route to other postings. Many white servicemen saw the wearing of zoot suits as flouting the war effort. Mexican-Americans came to be seen as unpatriotic, despite the fact that they were overrepresented in the military, serving at a higher rate than whites. They also had one of the highest percentages of Congressional Medal of Honor recipients.
Trouble began in June of 1943, when mobs of white servicemen roamed that city, attacking allegedly “unpatriotic” Mexican-Americans wearing zoot suits. While the rioters focused on Latino youths, young African Americans and Filipinos were also targeted. Riots against Latinos soon spread throughout California to San Diego and Oakland, then across the country to Chicago, Philadelphia, and New York City. It was the first time in American history that fashion choices led to widespread civil unrest.