The Zoot Suit Riots were a series of violent conflicts that occurred from June 3 to June 8, 1943, in Los Angeles, California, during which U.S. servicemen attacked young Latinos and other minorities who wore zoot suits—outfits featuring balloon-legged trousers and long coats with wide lapels and exaggeratedly padded shoulders. While ostensibly blamed on the so-called “zoot suiters'” lack of “patriotism” during World War II, the attacks were actually more about race than fashion. Racial tensions at the time had been heightened by the Sleepy Lagoon murder trial, involving the 1942 slaying of a young Latino man in a Los Angeles barrio.
Before the Riots
During the late 1930s, Los Angeles had become home to the largest concentration of Mexicans and Mexican Americans living in the United States. By the summer of 1943, tensions between the thousands of white U.S. servicemen stationed in and around the city and the zoot suit-wearing young Latinos were running high. Although nearly half a million Mexican Americans were serving in the military at the time, many of the L.A.-area servicemen viewed the zoot-suiters—many of whom were actually too young to be eligible—as World War II draft dodgers. These feelings, along with racial tensions in general and local Latinos’ disgust over the Sleepy Lagoon murder, eventually boiled over into the Zoot Suit Riots.
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