Where and how the Zoot Suit Riots swept across L.A.

Jun 09, 2023

Eighty years ago this month, Los Angeles was engulfed in the lawlessness and violence that became known as the Zoot Suit Riots. The name is misleading because it suggests that the zoot suiters — the young Mexican, Black and Filipino men and boys who wore the flamboyant outfits — were the perpetrators. In fact, they were the victims.

The attacks by servicemen and white Angelenos on zoot suiters, derided as "gamin dandies" in The Times, were driven by prejudice and the anti-immigrant attitudes of the era. The roots of the unrest can be traced to events that occurred more than a year earlier — the murder of a young man and the incarceration of Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor.

Here's how the violence started, and where it spread.