Zoot Suit Riots - Reactions

Reactions

As the riots subsided, nationwide public condemnation of the military and civil officials followed. The most urgent concern of officials was however relations with Mexico as the economy of Southern California relied on the importation of Mexican labor to assist in the harvesting of California crops. After the Mexican Embassy lodged a formal protest with the State Department, Governor Warren of California ordered the creation of the McGucken committee to investigate and determine the cause of the riots. In 1943 the committee issued its report; it determined racism to be a central cause of the riots, further stating that it was "an aggravating practice (of the media) to link the phrase zoot suit with the report of a crime." The Governor appointed a "Peace Officers Committee on Civil Disturbances" chaired by Robert W. Kenny, president of the National Lawyers Guild to make recommendations to the police. Human relations committees were appointed and police departments were required to train their officers to treat all citizens equally. At the same time, Mayor Fletcher Bowron came to his own conclusion. The riots, he said, were caused by Mexican juvenile delinquents and by white Southerners. Racial prejudice was not a factor.

A week later First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt commented on the riots, which the local press had largely attributed to criminal actions by the Mexican-American community, in her newspaper column. "The question goes deeper than just suits. It is a racial protest. I have been worried for a long time about the Mexican racial situation. It is a problem with roots going a long way back, and we do not always face these problems as we should." – June 16 Eleanor Roosevelt

This led to an outraged response from the Los Angeles Times which printed an editorial the following day, in which it accused Mrs. Roosevelt of having communist leanings and stirring "race discord".

On June 21, 1943 the State Un-American Activities Committee under State Senator Jack Tenney arrived in Los Angeles with orders to "determine whether the present Zoot-Suit Riots were sponsored by Nazi agencies attempting to spread disunity between the United States and Latin-American countries." Although Tenney claimed he had evidence the riots were "axis-sponsored" the evidence was never presented although the claims were supported in the minds of the public by Japanese propaganda broadcasts accusing the North American government of ignoring the brutality of U.S. Marines towards the Mexican community. In late 1944, ignoring the findings of the McGucken committee and the unanimous reversal of the convictions in the Sleepy Lagoon case on October 4, the Tenney Committee announced that the National Lawyers Guild was an "effective communist front."

Many post-war activists such as Luis Valdez, Ralph Ellison and Richard Wright have claimed that they were inspired by the zoot suit riots. Cesar Chávez was a zoot suiter when he first became interested in community politics and zoot suiter Malcolm X took part in the Harlem zoot suit riots.