When was the zoot suit riots

Interactive activity introduces students to the history and often untold story of the U. Roles available in Spanish. By Gilda L. Reflections on teaching students about the walkouts by Chicano students in California. A role play on the history of the Vietnam War that is left out of traditional textbooks.

By Bill Bigelow and Linda Christensen. Empathy, or "social imagination," allows students to connect to "the other" with whom, on the surface, they may appear to have little in common. Rethinking the U. By Bob Peterson.

A role play on the Constitutional Convention which brings to life the social forces active during and immediately following the American Revolution with focus on two key topics: suffrage and slavery. By Doug Sherman. The author describes how he uses biographies and film to introduce students to the role of people involved in the Civil Rights Movement beyond the familiar heroes.

He emphasizes the role and experiences of young people in the Movement. Related Resources. Teaching Activities Free. Teaching Activity. By Ursula Wolfe-Rocca. In this role play students analyze who is to blame for the illegal, mass deportations of Mexican Americans and immigrants during the Great Depression. Books: Fiction. Book — Historical fiction. By Margarita Engle. You can get one of my dresses. Money to fund an appeal came in from across the country. Prominent members of the Committee visited the boys to reassure them they would not be forgotten.

You were railroaded. Narration In the months following the trial the city grew more tense. Skirmishes between sailors and zoot suiters became a daily occurrence. They would walk down the street, five abreast and if you walked around them they would laugh or stick their hand out and hit you. After a while you got, so you would go down the side streets instead of confronting them.

One of the sailors turned around, and grabbed the arm of the young civilian, and from that point the fight broke out. It seemed that both sides were primed for confrontation, and the street seemed to explode in a fight.

In the process, the sailor had his jaw broken, he was knocked unconscious, and his buddies had to drag him back to the armory.

Narration Later that night, a group of sailors armed with belts and clubs left the Naval armory and headed downtown. The Zoot Suit Riots had begun. All of a sudden the lights went on, and you hear a lot of noise -- commotion, and a lot of guys yelling or something. Now you turn around and you see these servicemen, beating the heck out of all these Mexicans. So what I did is I dived underneath the counter and stayed there and, you know, protected myself because it became very wild.

It was like a movie set. Narration Among the victims in the theater were twelve and thirteen year old boys, beaten by American servicemen because of the clothes they wore. They came back happy. So as the riot played itself out, there had to be a lot more sort of search and destroy -- to use a military metaphor.

And that's where you get the real movement into East Los Angeles. Narration Once in the barrio, sailors broadened their attack beyond Mexican boys in zoot-suits. Any Mexican in their path was a potential target. The notion of a zoot-suiter was always racialized, even though Mexicans were not the only people wearing zoot suits. So a riot that first was aiming atindividuals because of their dress becomes a more expansive sort of riot, aimed at a particular racial population; Mexican-Americans.

Narration It didn't take long for the kids from the barrios to organize and fight back. And it was just jammed. So we was waiting, it was already getting dark. So then about 20, 20, 30 guys come out in the street sort of so when the sailors come they could see them. And as soon as they went out there here comes the truck loads, truck loads of sailors and civilians. And they, uh they let out a cry, there they are, there they are. And they came in. As they came in, once they got all the way in, we all came out ….

I had myself, had a bat and I used it. And there was people hurt on both sides. And I got a couple of good blows that knocked me down.

They took me back to the base and put me in sick bay overnight. And the next morning I went to doing my normal duties. But I had two good shiners. At night time, right? At night time they came. So we just disappear, right? And then beat the hell out of the guy, right? Narration On the fifth day of the riots, 5, civilians showed up to assist the sailors. I was sixteen at the time, but I did drive. The Pachucos had just taken over….

I felt that I was doing my share for the war effort. And he says, are you guys coming to fight sailors? And I says, yeah.

And at that time the gas was rationed. And he says, all I want you to do is get one of them white guys for me. Thousands of marines, soldiers, and sailors from as far away as Las Vegas arrived in the City of the Angels, itching to clean up the town. Mexican American kids were overwhelmed. In a ritual repeated across the city, servicemen stripped them of their clothes and burnt the garments on the streets.

Never taking the offensive in trying to stop the riot. And only showing up after the rioting servicemen have swept through an area. And they show up only to arrest the victims of riot, and throw them into jail. With the sailors, they'd put us in the jeep, take us a couple of blocks away and tell us to get back to our ship or get back to the station. You tell me one of the sailors that got arrested for beating the hell out of somebody, huh?

Out of control in a wartime society. It could in fact lead to much greater problems, if servicemen kept disobeying their superiors, and going down into these communities. Narration On June 8, military authorities in consultation with civic leaders declared the city off-limits to servicemen. The rioting ended soon afterwards. The following day the city council adopted a resolution banning the wearing of zoot suits on LA streets. Wearing the suit in public was punishable by a thirty-day jail term.

Stores that sold the suits quickly moved to distance themselves from the style that had become a symbol of rebellion. They simply couldn't choose what they could wear. They simply couldn't choose who they could be. That this was not a society that allowed for that kind of freedom of expression for these particular youth. And that's a very painful lesson. It's a very painful lesson when one hears the rhetoric of Americans all, the rhetoric of American promise, open to all sorts of immigrants, all sorts of people.

Narration As the riots subsided, the governor ordered the creation of a citizens committee. Its charge was to investigate and determine the cause of the riots. Ironically, prison life had sheltered the 38 th St.

With Hollywood stars still working on their behalf, the kids got special treatment. Not prison food.

Their food. You know, steak, pork chops, milk, ice cream, cake everything. Narration Unlike the other boys, Hank Leyvas refused to play along. You are standing up to the iron door waiting for the guard to come along and take the count. Listening as his footsteps fade away in the distance. Finally, in November of , defense attorneys filed an appeal with the California Second District Court claiming their clients had been denied a fair trial.

A year passed before a decision was handed down. By this time, Hank and the others had been locked up for more than two years. It was like a shock. And we felt like celebrating. So we dug it up. And we got drunk that night in the barracks over there. And the officers came, you know. Leave them alone. And we drank that whole barrel, yeah. The court ruled that Judge Fricke had committed serious errors in the trial and threw out the verdict—but the court did not clear the 38 th St boys of the murder charge.

Although LA authorities declined to re-try the case, the Sleepy Lagoon murder haunted Hank and the others for life. He had already signed into the Merchant Marine. He had already had a trial run. And he was in uniform. And uh, it didn't happen… All this happened and it just broke his future. Narration Jose Diaz was dead and his killer got away with murder. Narration Decades passed before the truth emerged. Toward the end of her life, Lorena Encinas at last shared her secret about the Sleepy Lagoon.

And she also was trying to protect my Uncle Louie. Narration Lorena claimed that her brother Louie was at the party before the 38 th St kids arrived, but had been thrown out for causing problems. Later that night as Jose Diaz and two companions left the party, they were met by an angry Louie Encinas and friends. Narration Louie Encinas was picked up in the dragnet following the Sleepy Lagoon murder but was let go by police.

It condemned the role played by the press and by the LAPD and determined race to be a central cause of the riots. At the same time, the Mayor came to his own conclusion. They remained wards of the California Youth Authority until they reached 21 years of age. Find out all about ankle chokers, sharkskin suits, beehive hair, the semi-drape, the Million Dollar Theater, penny arcades, and the pachuco hop.

How did the Los Angeles press report the riots? Read excerpts from two newspapers of the time. Local police officers often watched from the sidelines, then arrested the victims of the beatings. Thousands more servicemen, off-duty police officers and civilians joined the fray over the next several days, marching into cafes and movie theaters and beating anyone wearing zoot-suit clothing or hairstyles duck-tail haircuts were a favorite target and were often cut off.

Blacks and Filipinos—even those not clad in zoot suits—were also attacked. Taxi drivers offered free rides to servicemen to rioting areas, and thousands of military personnel and civilians from San Diego and other parts of Southern California converged on Los Angeles to join the mayhem. Roosevelt —but their pleas met with little action. One eyewitness, writer Carey McWilliams, painted a terrifying picture:. Marching through the streets of downtown Los Angeles, a mob of several thousand soldiers, sailors, and civilians, proceeded to beat up every zoot-suiter they could find.

Street cars were halted while Mexicans, and some Filipinos and Negroes, were jerked out of their seats, pushed into the streets, and beaten with sadistic frenzy. Some of the most disturbing violence was clearly racist in nature: According to several reports, a black defense plant worker—still wearing his defense-plant identification badge—was yanked off a streetcar, after which one of his eyes was gouged out with a knife.

Zoot suiters lined up outside Los Angeles jail en route to court after feud with sailors, Local papers framed the racial attacks as a vigilante response to an immigrant crime wave, and police generally restricted their arrests to the Latinos who fought back.

The Los Angeles City Council issued a ban on zoot suits the following day. Similar incidents took place that same year in cities such as Philadelphia, Chicago and Detroit. The wearers of zoot suits are not necessarily persons of Mexican descent, criminals or juveniles. Many young people today wear zoot suits. Accessed via web. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present.

The June riots took their name from the baggy suits worn by many minority youths