SLEEPY LAGOON & THE ZOOT SUIT RIOTS &
L.A. DURING WORLD WAR II
Influx of Mexican Immigrants
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"Pressures related to U.S. involvement in World War II contributed to the racial tensions that preceded the riots. Workers were needed in the agricultural and service sectors of the United States to fill the jobs vacated by those who were serving in the military. An agreement was reached with Mexico whereby temporary workers from Mexico were brought into the United States. This influx of Mexican workers was not particularly welcomed by white Americans." - Encyclopedia Brittanica
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This program is known as the Bracero Program
Fabric Ration
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"As part of the war effort, by March 1942 the United States had begun rationing various resources. Restrictions on wool had a direct effect on the manufacture of wool suits and other clothing. There were regulations prohibiting the manufacturing of zoot suits, but a network of bootleg tailors continued to manufacture them. This exacerbated racial tensions, as Mexican American youths wearing the zoot suits were seen as un-American because they were deliberately ignoring the rationing regulations." - Encyclopedia Brittanica
MEXICAN-AMERICAN GANGS IN L.A.
Why join a gang?
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"The roots of the gang crisis in Latino communities go back to the 1940’s when Mexican Americans were treated violently by the dominant culture. According to Rodriguez, Latino gangs originated with the “Mexican Pachuco style of 1930’s and 1940’s, and was later recreated with the Cholos” (4). The Pachucos became the model to follow for new gangs because they developed the foundations of a gang: “the Mexican Pachuco initiated the emblematic tattoos, the signing with hands, the writing of legends on walls” (4). In Gang Nation narratives, by Monica Brown, she analyzes the plays of Luis Valdez about the 1940’s “Pachucos” and the “Zoot Suit Riots” and concludes that the Pachuco of this time was struggling with issues of identity and being “caught between nations” (40). Latinos today face the same issues of identity confronted by those Pachucos of the 1940’s. Some of the difference between Mexican Pachucos and the new generation is the way they conduct business. Although Pachucos where considered an outlaw group by the dominant culture they respected their communities and older citizens."
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"Furthermore, it is sometimes a family tradition to join the gang, as Ruiz states in her autobiography. She was expected to join the gang because her cousins were the leaders. Latino youth join gangs to feel a sense of belonging. Many Latinos struggle with issues of identity because they feel caught in between two cultures. To create that sense of belonging they form clubs or gangs. Rodriguez states that gangs were seen as clubs by their members: “It was something to belong to something that was ours. We weren’t in boy scouts, in sports teams or camping groups” (42)." - Maria C. Lara: McNair
38th Street Gang & Henry (Hank) Levyas
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Led by Henry Levyas in the 1940s, the 38th Street gang is one of the oldest and largest Mexican-American street gangs in Los Angeles. They became well known after their false accusations after the murder at the Sleepy Lagoon. They occupy the South Side of Los Angeles and a few areas in East Los Angeles, they also have ties to the Mexican Mafia.
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In the play, the main character Henry Reyna is based on Henry Levyas.
SLEEPY LAGOON MURDER
"The Sleepy Lagoon Murder Trial of 1942
Young men from 38th Street ring the trail room for their arraignment. (Herald Examiner Collection, L.A. Public Library)
Murder at the Sleepy Lagoon
The 38th Street Gang was located in what is now part of South Los Angeles near Vernon and Long Beach Boulevards. The gang, along with other community members, frequented a water reservoir in a gravel pit located on the Williams Ranch in East Los Angeles. This reservoir, known to the community as Sleepy Lagoon, was used as a swimming pool by Mexican youth who were not allowed to use segregated public pools.
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On the evening of August 1, 1942 Henry and Dora had a violent confrontation at Sleepy Lagoon with a neighboring gang from Downey. Henry and Dora left but returned later to the location with his gang in search of the attackers who had already fled the scene. Futile in their search for the rival gang, the members of the 38th Street Gang decided to head for a party at the home of the Delgadillo family. When a fight broke out at the Delgadillo home Henry and the gang fled the scene. The following morning the dead body of José Díaz was found on a dirt road near the Delgadillo home. The Sleepy Lagoon Murder Trial began when Henry Leyvas and the 38th Street Gang were identified as being at the scene of the murder.
The Williams Ranch and the “Sleepy Lagoon” reservoir, 1942. Murder At The Sleepy Lagoon Zoot Suits, Race, & Riot in Wartime L.A. by Eduardo Obregon Pagan (The University of North Carolina Press 2003)
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The Trial
Six hundred Mexican American youth were rounded up by a citywide dragnet led by the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD). Eventually twenty-two alleged members of the 38th Street Gang were accused of the murder of José Díaz. Young women of the 38th Street Gang were also detained and placed in jail on suspicion of wrongdoing.
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On October 13, 1942 People v. Zamora went to trial as the largest mass trial in California history. The trial took place in an atmosphere of intense prejudice fed and sustained by the press in Los Angeles. Throughout the trial the prosecutor pointed to the clothing and hairstyle of Pachucos as evidence of their guilt. This only added fuel to the fire of prejudice held by the non-Latino community. The prejudice and discrimination encountered by Leyvas and the 38th Street Gang was an example of racial profiling.
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In failing to provide an unbiased trial, the United States Justice System failed to protect its citizens. Today, the trial is still considered by many as one of the most egregious miscarriages of justice in the United States.
The Conviction
On January 12, 1943 in the case of People v. Zamora, presided by Judge Charles Fricke, the court found five of the seventeen defendants in the case guilty of assault and sentenced to six months to one year in jail. Nine were found guilty of second degree murder and sentenced to five years to life. Henry Leyvas, Jose Ruiz and Robert Telles were found guilty of first degree murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. The twelve found guilty of murder were sent to San Quentin State Prison to serve their sentences.
The young women of the 38th Street Gang refused to testify against the gang during the trial. Due to their refusal to cooperate they were sent to the Ventura School for Girls, a women’s reformatory, without benefit of trial or jury. Dora Baca, Henry’s girlfriend, was among the five young women sent to this reformatory.
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Mrs. Guadalupe Leyvas (Henry’s mother) at the arraignment. (Herald Examiner Collection, L.A. Public Library)
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Sleepy Lagoon Defense Committee
Following the trial, the Sleepy Lagoon Defense Committee (SLDC) was organized by the community. Attorney and author Carey McWilliams served as chair to the committee. The goals of the SLDC were to raise community awareness and to fund a legal appeal for the young men of the 38th Street Gang who were serving sentences.
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The committee quickly drew people from the community, film industry, education, political arena and labor unions. Alice McGrath joined the SLDC after the members of the 38th Street Gang were imprisoned. She became the executive secretary of the organization. Every six weeks she paid visits to the sentenced members, reviewed the progress of the committee, distributed SLDC news bulletins and raised morale. By 1944 the SLDC had raised enough money and the case was moved to the Second District Court of Appeals. In October of the same year Judge Clement Nye overturned the verdicts of the case citing insufficient evidence, the denial of the defendants’ right to counsel and the overt bias of Judge Fricke in the courtroom. Henry Leyvas and the 38th Street Gang were released and their sentences overturned."
THE PEOPLE V. ZAMMORA
"Defendants: Manuel Delgado, Henry Leyvas, John Matuz, Jack Melendez, Angel Padilla, Ysmael Parra, Manuel Reyes, Chepe Ruiz, Robert Telles, Victor Thompson, Henry Ynostroza, Gus Zammora et al.
Crimes Charged: Murder, assault with a deadly weapon with intent to commit murder, misdemeanor assault
Chief Defense Lawyers: George E. Shibley, et al.
Chief Prosecutors: John Barnes, Clyde Shoemaker
Judge: Charles W. Fricke
Place: Los Angeles, California
Date of Trial: October 19, 1942-January 12, 1943
Verdicts: The defendants listed above were all convicted on all counts. Three others were convicted of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to commit murder, two were convicted of misdemeanor assault, and five were acquitted on all counts.
Sentences: Leyvas, Ruiz, Telles: life imprisonment for first-degree murder; Delgado, Matuz, Melendez, Padilla, Parra, Reyes, Ruiz, Telles, Thompson, Ynostroza, Zammora: five years to life imprisonment for second-degree murder
SIGNIFICANCE: The Sleepy Lagoon case was one of the major civil rights cases of the 1940s and exacerbated ethnic tensions which culminated in Los Angeles' "Zoot Suit Riots" of 1943.
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Late at night on August 1, 1942, eight to ten uninvited young men were ordered to leave a birthday party at the east Los Angeles ranch home of the Delgadillo family. The party crashers ended up half a mile away on a "lover's lane," where they assaulted several young people parked by a reservoir nicknamed "Sleepy Lagoon." The victims of the beating returned to their own neighborhood, collected a large group of friends, and returned to confront their attackers. Finding no one there, they followed the sound of music to the nearby Delgadillo party. What happened when they arrived would never be clear, but a brawl erupted inside and around the Delgadillo house.
Police arrived to find two stabbing victims. They also discovered 22-year-old Jose Diaz dying nearby on the roadside. Authorities blamed Diaz's death and the fight at the Delgadillo house on a perceived "Mexican youth gang" problem in Los Angeles. Intending to extinguish gang-related crime, police used Diaz's death as a pretext to arrest hundreds of young Mexicans and Mexican-Americans for offenses ranging from weapons possession to minor charges like vagrancy, curfew violation, "unlawful assemblage," or possessing a draft card with an incorrect address.
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By the end of the week, between 300 and 600 people had been detained in nightly police sweeps. Police singled out young "zoot suiters," who wore extravagant wide trousers, drape jackets, and flamboyant hats. Twenty-two of the detainees were charged with murder and assault, while two others were indicted as juvenile offenders. They became known as the "Sleepy Lagoon defendants." Prosecutors accused them of being members of a teenaged "gang," which had conspired to crash the Delgadillo party in search of the group that had attacked them earlier. Since Jose Diaz was allegedly killed during a fight resulting from this conspiracy, the Sleepy Lagoon defendants were held collectively responsible for Diaz's murder.
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American participation in World War II played a major role in how the case was viewed. Conservative dailies like the Los Angeles Times and Los Angeles Examiner railed against "zoot suit hoodlums," but skeptics derided the trial. The California Eagle, Los Angeles' African-American weekly, accused the conservative press of manufacturing fake "crime waves" perpetrated by minority young people in order to perpetuate segregation. Each side accused the other of aiding Nazi attempts to sow discord in the United States during wartime. Worried over reports that the Axis powers were using the trial to encourage a fascist "fifth column" in his country, Mexico's consul accused the prosecution and the conservative Los Angeles press of being motivated by racism." - Law Library
ZOOT SUIT RIOTS
"The Zoot Suit Riots Begin
In the summer of 1943, tensions ran high between zoot-suiters and the large contingent of white sailors, soldiers and Marines stationed in and around Los Angeles. Mexican Americans were serving in the military in high numbers, but many servicemen viewed the zoot-suit wearers as World War II draft dodgers (though many were in fact too young to serve in the military).
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On May 31, a clash between uniformed servicemen and Mexican American youths resulted in the beating of a U.S. sailor. Partly in retaliation, on the evening of June 3, about 50 sailors from the local U.S. Naval Reserve Armory marched through downtown Los Angeles carrying clubs and other crude weapons, attacking anyone seen wearing a zoot suit or other racially identified clothing.
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In the days that followed, the racially charged atmosphere in Los Angeles exploded in a number of full-scale riots. Mobs of U.S. servicemen took to the streets and began attacking Latinos and stripping them of their suits, leaving them bloodied and half-naked on the sidewalk. 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). Black[ people] and Filipinos—even those not clad in zoot suits—were also attacked.
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The Zoot Suit Riots Spread
By June 7, the rioting had spread outside downtown Los Angeles to Watts, East Los Angeles and other neighborhoods. 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.
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Leaders of the Mexican American community implored state and local officials to intervene—The Council for Latin American Youth even sent a telegram to President Franklin D. Roosevelt—but their pleas met with little action. One eyewitness, writer Carey McWilliams, painted a terrifying picture:
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“On Monday evening, June seventh, thousands of Angelenos … turned out for a mass lynching. 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 [African Americans], were jerked out of their seats, pushed into the streets, and beaten with sadistic frenzy.”
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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.
Aftermath of the Zoot Suit Riots
Zoot suiters lined up outside Los Angeles jail en route to court after feud with sailors, 1943.
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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 riots didn’t die down until June 8, when U.S. military personnel were finally barred from leaving their barracks.
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The Los Angeles City Council issued a ban on zoot suits the following day. Amazingly, no one was killed during the weeklong riot, but it wasn’t the last outburst of zoot suit-related racial violence. Similar incidents took place that same year in cities such as Philadelphia, Chicago and Detroit.
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A Citizens’ Committee appointed by California Governor Earl Warren to investigate the Zoot Suit Riots convened in the weeks after the riot. The committee’s report found that, “In undertaking to deal with the cause of these outbreaks, the existence of race prejudice cannot be ignored.”
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Additionally, the committee described the problem of juvenile delinquency youth as “one of American youth, not confined to any racial group. The wearers of zoot suits are not necessarily persons of Mexican descent, criminals or juveniles. Many young people today wear zoot suits.” - History
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It is still illegal to wear a zoot suit in Los Angeles.
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The Zoot Suit Riots were more of a "system of humiliation more than anything." - NBC
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