?A killer-diller coat with a drape-shape, reat-pleats and shoulders padded like a
lunatic?s cell?. Detroit Red aka Malcolm X ---- ?These youths refused to accept the
racialized norms of segregated America. With their flashy ensembles, distinct slang, extra
cash (generated by a booming war economy), and rebellious attitude, pachucos and pachucas
participated in a spectacular subculture and threatened the social order by visibly
occupying public spaces." Catherine Ramirez, Woman in a Zoot Suit. ---- In previous issues
of Organise! we have focussed on various youth movements that developed in the 20th
century and in one way or other were expressions of dissent and disquiet with the present
system. We have taken looks at the Edelweiss Pirates, the Zazous of France, and the
Schlurfs of Austria. In this issue we look at the zoot-suiters, a style and movement that
developed among black and Hispanic Americans.
The zoot suit appears to have developed around 1935 in nightclubs in the black area of
Harlem, New York, at Sammy?s Follies and the Savoy Ballroom. Zoot suits exaggerated the
smart 1930s look, and were worn by young blacks as an expression of personality, in a
world where social recognition, and a limited one at that, could only be gained through
being a musician, boxer, and in a few instances, as a writer.
The future Malcolm X was fifteen in 1940 when he bought his first zoot suit. In the
Autobiography of Malcolm X he describes this outfit: ??I was measured, and the young
salesman picked off a rack a zoot suit that was just wild: sky-blue pants thirty inches in
the knee and angle narrowed down to twelve inches at the bottom, and a long coat that
pinched my waist and flared out below my knees. As a gift, the salesman said, the store
would give me a narrow leather belt with my initial ?L? on it. Then he said I ought to
also buy a hat, and I did ? blue, with a feather in the four-inch brim. Then the store
gave me another present: a long, thick-lined, gold plated chain that swung down lower than
my coat hem. I was sold forever on credit. ? I took three of those twenty-five cent
sepia-toned, while-you wait pictures of myself, posed the way ?hipsters? wearing their
zoots would ?cool it? ? hat angled, knees drawn close together, feet wide apart, both
index fingers jabbed toward the floor. The long coat and swinging chain and the Punjab
pants were much more dramatic if you stood that way.?
The determination to have a smart appearance despite poverty, as a sign of pride and
self-respect, has a long tradition in the working class. Musicians, whether in blues or
jazz, made a big effort to be smartly turned out. Musicians, among them Louis Armstrong
and Dizzy Gillespie, always dressed in immaculate suits and were called ?The Gentlemen of
Harlem?.
The zoot suit took this notion of gentility and immaculate clothing three steps further,
upping the ante with jackets with huge shoulders and trousers pegged down to the ankles.
As the black author Ralph Ellison in his magnificent novel The Invisible Man wrote: ?What
about these three boys, coming now along the platform, tall and slender, walking with
swinging shoulders in their well-pressed, too-hot-for-summer suits, their collars high and
tight about their necks, their identical hats of black cheap felt set upon the crowns of
their heads with a severe formality above their conked hair? It was as though I'd never
seen their like before: walking slowly, their shoulders swaying, their legs swinging from
their hips in trousers that ballooned upward from cuffs fitting snug about their ankles;
their coats long and hip-tight with shoulders far too broad to be those of natural western
men.?
So the zoot suit was more than an exaggerated gentility, more than a fashion statement. As
Stuart Cosgrove notes in The Zoot Suit and Style Warfare: ?These youths were not simply
grotesque dandies parading the city?s secret underworld, they were ?the stewards of
something uncomfortable?, a spectacular reminder that the social order had failed to
contain their energy and difference?.The zoot suit was a refusal; a subcultural gesture
that refused to concede to the manners of subservience?. It was a symbol of pride of
ethnicity.
The zoot suit fashion began spreading from the black urban areas to the Mexican-American
youths ?the pachucos ? of Los Angeles and other towns on the West Coast, who further
popularised the look. The Mexican poet and writer Octavio Paz wrote in his The Labyrinth
of Solitude that: ?The pachucos are youths, for the most part of Mexican origin, who form
gangs in southern U.S. cities. They can be identified by their language and behaviour, as
well as by the clothing they affect. They are instinctive rebels, and North American
racism has vented its wrath on them more than once.? The pachucos were second-generation
working class immigrants. They were alienated by the racism around them, whether at
school, in work, or on the welfare line. Rather than hiding their disgust with society,
they adopted a swaggering and proud posture. Like black zoot-suiters they paraded their
hostility and difference. It should be remembered that both pachucos and pachucas held
down several jobs at a time, and had to save for many weeks to acquire their expensive and
immaculate apparel.
In addition, the style spread to Filipino-American youth. In the 1940s, they were banned
from white dance halls in California and began to frequent dance halls with a black and
Hispanic clientele, some of them picking up the zoot suit style, as did some
Japanese-American youths.
The wearing of the zoot suit became more and more difficult with the outbreak of war and
the introduction of wool rationing by the War Production Board in March 1942, with a 26%
cut in the use of fabrics. This turned the sporting of zoot suits into illicit acts.
However they continued to be made by underground tailors. Zoot-suiters became seen more
and more as anti-patriotic.
The war mobilised over four million civilians into the US armed forces. At the same time
five million women entered the wartime labour force. This caused big changes in family
life, with the erosion of parental control. There was a marked increase in juvenile
delinquency. Because of parents being on active military service or in war work and with
an increase in night work because of the demands of the war, many young people were able
to stay out late on street corners, or in bars and cafes.
========================================
The Zoot Suit Riots
The wearing of the zoot suit was now in very marked and polarised opposition to servicemen
in uniform. Zoot suit wearers were seen as both delinquents and as thumbing the nose at
rationing.
In early June 1943 servicemen on shore leave in Los Angeles began to attack pachuco
zoot-suiters in the street. As a result, sixty zoot suiters, rather than their attackers,
were arrested by the police. The police began to patrol the streets, whilst rumours
circulated of servicemen forming vigilante groups. More and more zoot-suiters were
attacked and stripped of their outfits. Some drunken sailors ran riot through a cinema,
dragged two pachuco zooters on stage, where their suits were stripped from them and
urinated on. The confiscated suits were burnt on bonfires. In addition, in a move that
reflected what happened with Hitler Youth attacks on Schlurfs and Vichy youth organisation
attacks on Zazous, zoot suiters had their ducktail hairstyles shorn by rampaging,
soldiers, sailors, and marines.
In the second week of June, Pachuco youths retaliated by slashing a sailor, whilst a
policeman was run over when he tried to flag down a car-full of zoot-suiters. Pachucos
stoned a train load of sailors, fights broke out daily in San Bernardino, and vigilantes
assembled in San Diego and began to look for zoot-suiters. Meanwhile a young Mexican was
stabbed by Marines.
The riots accelerated with a police special officer gunning down a zoot-suiter in Azusa.
Pachuco youths were arrested for rioting in the Lincoln Heights district of LA. Now black
zoot-suiters became involved, wrecking a train in Watts. Three zoot suit ?gang leaders?
received widespread coverage in the press after their arrests. Two were Mexican, whilst
the other was black. Their arrests confirmed the popular view that most zoot-suiters were
black or Mexican, that they were of conscription age but were avoiding it or had been
exempted on medical grounds. What was conveniently forgotten was coverage of white
zoot-suiters, of servicemen being arrested for rioting, and the refusal of
Mexican-American servicemen to take part in vigilante raids.
The riots spread beyond California to Arizona and Texas. Now media coverage began to
concentrate on gangs of women zoot-suiters, like the Slick Chicks and the Black Widows.
The appearance of the female zoot-suiters was linked to the breakdown of family normality:
?? There are many indications that the war years saw a remarkable increase in the
numbers of young women who were taken into social care or referred to penal institutions,
as a result of the specific social problems they had to encounter? (Cosgrove). The Slick
Chicks and Black Widows wore black drape jackets, fishnet stockings, and tight skirts,
with heavy make-up, dark lipstick, and black eyeliner, with pompadour hairstyles. Some
adopted the full zoot suit outfit, challenging heterosexual norms of dressing. Cosgrove
again: ?The Black Widows clearly existed outside the orthodoxies of wartime society:
playing no part in the industrial war effort, and openly challenging conventional notions
of feminine beauty and sexuality?.
Whilst the disorder died down in Los Angeles in the second week of June, it now spread to
Detroit, New York, and Philadelphia. Within three weeks, Detroit experienced the worst
race riot in its history. These were not ?zoot suit riots? as such, but nevertheless they
were preceded by attacks on wearers of zoot suits, that is, black youths.
The press had from the start instigated and fuelled hostility against wearers of the zoot
suit and against Pachuco culture. During the disorder, their daily and false reports
further fanned the flames. However, other parts of the establishment were worried. State
senators were concerned about relations with Mexico. Senator Downey said that there could
be ?grave consequences? with the souring of relations between the USA and Mexico,
hindering the supply of Mexican labour to help grow crops in California. The Mexican
embassy did then raise the matter with the State department. These US administrators were
not concerned with the appalling abuse and discrimination against the Mexican-American
population, they were concerned the effect the riots would have on the economy.
The press now began to deny the racial component of the disorder. As the black writer
Chester Himes protested: ?Zoot Riots are Race Riots? (Himes wrote a great series of novels
set in Harlem, with characters like Gravedigger Jones and Coffin Ed, which should be
read!) The response of the authorities was a crackdown on bootleg tailors, additional
detention centres, a youth forestry camp for youth under the age of 16, as well as an
increase in military and shore police, some increase in neighbourhood recreation
facilities, etc. As Cosgrove notes: ?The outcome of the zoot-suit riots was an inadequate,
highly localised, and relatively ineffective body of short-term public policies that
provided no guidelines for the more serious riots in Detroit and Harlem later in the same
summer.?
The zoot suit riots had an important effect on a generation of youth that was socially
disadvantaged. They happened whilst the USA was at war and they broke with the official
orthodoxy that America was united and was a champion of freedom. They, and the riots in
Detroit that followed, were signs of the unrest that was to come in the 1960s, when new
movements emerged and once again riots broke out. As Himes said, the racial factor was
important, but as important was the development of youth cultures that were beginning to
reject the norms of capitalist society, inequality, racism, and, with the pachucas, sexism
and ?normal? sexuality. They with the contemporary youth movements in Austria, France,
and Germany, were to be heralds of new and combative youth cultures that were to emerge in
the post-war years.
References: Baldwin, Natalia. War on the Home front: Politics and the Zoot Suit
http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/nationalcurriculum/units/2012/1/12.01.01.x.html
Cosgrove, Stuart. The Zoot Suit and Style Warfare in Zoot Suits and Second Hand Dresses
Mcrobbie, Angela (ed.)
Malcolm X. The Autobiography of Malcolm X.
---
Organise! magazine, issue 82, Summer 2014.
http://www.afed.org.uk
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