The Riots Themselves
As the violence escalated over the ensuing days, thousands of servicemen joined the attacks, marching abreast down streets, entering bars and movie houses and assaulting any young Latino males they encountered. In one incident, sailors dragged two zoot suiters on-stage as the film was being screened, stripped them in front of the audience and then urinated on their suits. Although police accompanied the rioting servicemen, they had orders not to arrest any of them. After several days, more than 150 people had been injured and police had arrested more than 500 "Latinos" on charges from "rioting" to "vagrancy".
A witness to the attacks, journalist Carey McWilliams wrote,
"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. Pushing its way into the important motion picture theaters, the mob ordered the management to turn on the house lights and then ran up and down the aisles dragging Mexicans out of their seats. Streetcars were halted while Mexicans, and some Filipinos and Negroes, were jerked from their seats, pushed into the streets and beaten with a sadistic frenzy."
The local press lauded the attacks by the servicemen, describing the assaults as having a "cleansing effect" that were ridding Los Angeles of "miscreants" and "hoodlums". As the riots progressed the media reported the arrest of Amelia Venegas, a female zoot suiter charged with carrying a brass knuckleduster. While the revelation of female pachucos' involvement in the riots led to frequent coverage of the activities of female pachuco gangs, the media supressed any mention of the white-American pachuco gangs that were also involved.
The Los Angeles City Council approved a resolution criminalising the wearing of "zoot suits with reat pleats within the city limits of LA" after Councilman Norris Nelson stated "The zoot suit has become a badge of hoodlumism". But no ordinance was ever approved by the City Council or signed into law by the Mayor although the council did encourage the War Production Board to take steps "to curb illegal production of men's clothing in violation of WPB limitation orders." White sailors and Marines had initially targeted only pachucos, but African-Americans in Zoot Suits were also attacked in the Central Avenue corridor area. This escalation compelled the Navy and Marine Corps command staffs to intervene on June 7, confining sailors and Marines to barracks and declaring Los Angeles off-limits to all military personnel with enforcement by U.S. Navy Shore Patrol personnel. Their official position remained that their men were acting in self defense.
By the middle of June the riots in Los Angeles were dying out but the riots spread throughout California to cities in Texas and Arizona while incidents broke out in other cities such as Detroit, New York and Philadelphia, where two members of Gene Krupa's dance band were beaten up for wearing the band's zoot suit stage costumes. A Zoot Suit riot at Cooley High School was initially dismissed as an "adolescent imitation" of the Los Angeles riots, however, within weeks Detroit was in the midst of its worst race riot in history.
Read more about this topic: Zoot Suit Riots