American servicemen and white Angelenos attacked and stripped children, teenagers, and youths who wore zoot suits, ostensibly because they considered the outfits, which were made from large amounts of fabric, to be unpatriotic during World War II.

[3] The Zoot Suit Riots followed the Sleepy Lagoon murder trial, after the death of a young Latino man in what was then an unincorporated commercial area near Los Angeles.

As young Mexican-American men from the neighborhood grew agitated and began a campaign of harassment, intimidation, and resistance a year prior to the riots, the Chavez Ravine area would later be a hot spot for encounters between the zoot suiters and sailors.

In the early 1940s, arrests of Mexican-American youths and negative stories in the Los Angeles Times fueled a perception that these pachuco gangs were delinquents who were a threat to the broader community.

Eduardo Obregón Pagán wrote: Many Angelenos saw the death of José Díaz as a tragedy that resulted from a larger pattern of lawlessness and rebellion among Mexican American youths, discerned through their self-conscious fashioning of difference, and increasingly called for stronger measures to crack down on juvenile delinquency.

[20][21] With the entry of the United States into World War II in December 1941 following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the nation had to deal with the restrictions of rationing and the prospects of conscription.

But the demand for zoot suits did not decline; a network of bootleg tailors based in Los Angeles and New York City continued to produce the garments.

[18] Meanwhile, American soldiers, sailors, and Marines from across the country travelled to Los Angeles in large numbers as part of the war effort; they were given leave while awaiting to be shipped out to the Pacific theater.

Officials began to cast wearing of zoot suits in moral terms and associated it with the commission of petty crime, violence and the snubbing of national wartime rules.

[18] In 1943, many servicemen resented the sight of young Latinos wearing zoot suits after clothing restrictions had been published, especially as most came from areas of the country with little experience or knowledge of Mexican-American culture.[where?

[26] This style of clothing cultivated a sense of racial pride and significance; however, the fashion statement soon made its way into the wardrobes of young Southern Californian Mexican Americans, Italians and Filipinos, who became the quintessential wearers of the zoot suit.

Additionally, "analysis of the Los Angeles zoot-suit riot and journalists' and politicians' in and the outfit's connections with race relations, slang, jazz music and dance permit an understanding of the politics and social significance of what is trivial in itself -- popular culture and its attendant styles".

The zoot suit provided young African American and Mexican youth a sense of individualistic identity within their cultures and society as they discovered "highly charged emotional and symbolic meaning" through the movement, music, and dress.

[28] Often the suit was paired with accessories such as chains and leather-soled shoes, which were typically worn to exaggerate and prove a point of rebellion standing against the wealth and status that many of these youth were unable to access due to their economic and racial identities.

[29] The female parallels were called "pachucas" and wore tight sweaters and relatively full, flared skirts, often paired with high hair-dos, large earrings, and heavy makeup.

[30] For some young women, the characteristics of the style promoted a sense of social mobility and "cultural hybridity" that was expressed through "increased interracial/ethnic relations, bilingualism, and pachuco slang".

Events like the Sleepy Lagoon incident of 1942 and Zoot Suit Riots of 1943 have been described as "a boyish fight over a pretty girl" and a brawl involving "homeboys".

One local Los Angeles newspaper included a story of two young women who had allegedly been abducted in downtown and raped in a "zoot suit orgy".

[30] Many of these reports began building up and was one of the major instigators of the coming riots, as servicemen had declared that they will take matters into their own hands since the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) had supposedly done nothing to stop the attacks from pachucos on their women.

[30] On the contrary, Horace R. Cayton, a writer for the Pittsburgh Courier, "attributed the riots to non-Mexican servicemen, who he claimed envied Mexican American male zooters and desired the 'pretty brown creatures' with whom they consorted".

During this period, the immense war buildup attracted tens of thousands of new workers to factories and shipyards in the West Coast, including African Americans from the South in the second wave of the Great Migration.

A dozen sailors, including Seaman Second Class Joe Dacy Coleman, were walking down Main Street in Los Angeles when they spotted a group of Mexican women on the opposite side.

[32] During the next few days, thousands of servicemen and residents joined the attacks, marching abreast down streets, entering bars and movie houses, and assaulting any young Mexican American males they encountered.

[24] 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.

The governor appointed the Peace Officers Committee on Civil Disturbances, chaired by Robert W. Kenny, president of the National Lawyers Guild to make recommendations to the police.

[1] Many post-war civil rights activists and authors, such as Luis Valdez, Ralph Ellison, and Richard Wright, have said they were inspired by the Zoot Suit Riots.

[18] On June 9, 2023, roughly 80 years after the attacks, the Los Angeles City Council publicly condemned the Zoot Suit riots and apologized for its role in contributing to it.