The monumental case of Worcester v. Georgia1 was a monumental case, which involved the jurisdiction of state laws concerning Native Americans, the reach of the Supreme Court, the responsibility of the Executive Branch, and also states’ rights. Its controversial opinion can be directly correlated with the Trail of Tears and Civil War. The Supreme Court tried to get out of a sticky situation in which it had political pressure from both sides. Ultimately, it seemed that the ruling did not change the track of where the country was headed.
Background:
In 1832, a monumental case concerning the jurisdiction of Cherokee lands came before the Supreme Court. It was concerning a Georgia law, passed in 1830, which required all whites that were living in Cherokee territory to apply for and receive a license from the governor of Georgia. The law reads:
[A]ll white persons residing within the limits of the Cherokee nation, on the 1st day of March next, or at any time thereafter without a license or permit from his excellency the governor, or from such agent as his excellence the governor shall authorize to grant such permit or license, and who shall not have taken the oath hereinafter required, shall be guilty of high misdemeanor, and upon conviction thereof, shall be punished by confinement to the penitentiary at hard labour for a term not less than four years.2
However, not only did one have to obtain a license, one also had to take an oath to “support and defend the constitution and laws of the state of Georgia”.3 Politics was heavily involved in the passing of this law. There was much rumor and speculation that the white Northern missionaries living among the Cherokees were expressing encouragement to resist the state in their strain to force the Cherokees to leave their lands. In actuality, “Worcester became intimate with leaders of the Cherokee government and did indeed encourage them to resist the removal pressures.”4 The legislature of Georgia was just trying to watch its back and trying to prevent an uprising.
Because of their refusal to leave, the state of Georgia ordered the arrest of Samuel A. Worcester, Elizur Butler, James Trott, Samuel Mays, Surry Eaton, Austin Copeland, and Edward D. Losure, all missionaries, on July 7, 1831. These missionaries were of the American Board of Commissioners foe Foreign Missions, “a Congregationalist organization based in Massachusetts”.5 While all but two were convicted and accepted pardons, Worcester and Butler knew how the case would turn out, and were determined and committed to running the case all the way to the Supreme Court, as a test case for Cherokee rights.
Trial Proceedings:
The County of Gwinnett criminal trial court, where the five missionaries took their sentences and pardons, first tried Worcester and Butler, as well as the other five missionaries. Worcester and Butler then went on to the County of Gwinnett Supreme Court, who claimed jurisdiction working as an appellate court. They were found guilty and were sentenced to four years of hard labor in a penitentiary, as was the punishment described in the Georgia law in question. Worcester appealed to the United States Supreme Court under the pretense of a writ of error, meaning he believed that the court’s decision was not only wrong, but also out of jurisdiction. As the Supreme Court report states, “The case of Elizur Butler, plaintiff in error v. The State of Georgia, was brought before the supreme court in the same manner.”6 The missionaries both believed that the state of Georgia held no jurisdiction when meddling with the affairs of the Cherokee Nation.
A writ of error was administered to the county court, returned by a clerk, but not signed by a judge. While the judge’s signature is asked for, it is not required. This rule has several precedents that are mentioned in the Supreme Court document. For example, “In M’Culloch v. The State of Maryland, 4 Wheat, 316m was a qui tam action, brought to recover a penalty, and the record was authenticated by the seal of the court and the signature of the clerk, without that of a judge.”7 Therefore, ““a record was duly created in the case, and while the state of Georgia never appeared before the Court, and publically announced that it would disregard any decree of the Court overturning a conviction, Worcester v. Georgia appeared on the Court’s docket for the 1832 Term.”8 The arguments began on February 20, 1832 with Wirt and Sergeant representing Worcester and Butler.
By looking at the pre-existing views of the justices, Worcester and Butler knew that they would win the case if they argued it correctly. In a stroke of luck, the conservative Justice Johnson was absent because of ill health, but Justice Duvall, who was a good friend of Story, Marshall and Wirt, had returned. In his concurrence in Cherokee Nation,9 Johnson stated that the Cherokees, and all Indians, were “nothing more than wandering hordes, held together only by ties of blood and habit, and having neither laws or government beyond what is required in a savage state”10 Luckily, he was not at this court. As White explains, “Story’s and Thompson’s support for the Cherokees was on record, and Marshall’s posture might have been surmised from hints in his Cherokee Nations opinion.”11 Story also had written several letters to his wife expressing blatant sympathy for the Cherokee Nation. He writes:
[I was] introduced to two of the Chiefs of the Cherokee Nation, so sadly dealt with by the state of Georgia. They are both educated men, and conversed with singular force and propriety of language upon their own case, the law of which they perfectly understood and reasoned upon. I never in my whole life was more affected by the consideration that they and all their race are destined to destruction. And I feel, as an America, disgraced by our gross violation of the public faith toward them.12
He later added, “I confess that I blush for my country”.13 Story’s support was very safe to assume.
The argument for the case itself was over jurisdiction. Did the state of Georgia have the constitutional right to regulate the law in the Cherokee territory? While Worcester and Butler believed they were being specifically targeted by the Georgia legislature because of their support of Cherokee resistance. They believed that if they applied for licenses, they would have been denied anyways. Worcester argues that the Cherokee nation is “out of the jurisdiction of [the county] court, and not in the county Gwinnett, or elsewhere within the jurisdiction of [the] court.”14 He states that:
[H]e was at the time of his arrest, engaged in preaching the gospel to the Cherokee Indians, and in translating the sacred Scriptures into their language, with the permission and approval of the said Cherokee nation, and in accordance with the humane policy of the government of the United States, for the civilization and improvement of Indians.15
He argues that the state of Georgia is out of jurisdiction because the fact that the treaties of the Cherokee Nation have been with the United States not the state. He claims that the Cherokee Nation is under jurisdiction of the federal government and that the “treaties the United States of America acknowledge the said Cherokee nation to be a sovereign nation, authorized to govern themselves”.16 He claims that Georgia’s attempt to stretch its laws across the territory undermine the sovereignty of the Cherokee Nation. He points out that “the aforesaid treaties, which, according to the constitution of the United States, compose a part of the supreme law of the land; and that these laws of Georgia are, therefore, unconstitutional, void, and of no effect.”17 Worcester also argues that these state laws impair the treaties between the federal government and Cherokees. Sergeant and Wirt also pointed out that the law itself, not only the conviction, was unconstitutional.
The stakes for this case were very high, possibly more extreme than anyone could have foreseen. With a hostile Congress and an even more hostile President Andrew Jackson breathing down the necks of the Justices, the pressure was on. The obvious issues riding on this decision were the Native American- United States relations and the future of legislation concerning Native Americans. However, what possibly none could have foreshadowed was the issue of states rights, the power of the judiciary, and the grasping hold of the federal government.
Opinion:
Chief Justice John Marshall delivered the opinion of the Supreme Court on March 3, 1832. Duvall, Story, and Thompson all signed on to it. McLean concurred but wanted to emphasize the limits of the Court when dealing with states’ rights. Baldwin dissented because he believed the validation of the writ of error was erroneous. The court sided with Worcester, entitling the Cherokee nation to the protection of the federal government and giving sovereignty to the tribe. This evident sign of paternalism was a contrast to Marshall’s previous ruling in Cherokee Nation v. Georgia18 where the court gave the state jurisdiction over the Indian tribes. Marshall argues that “the treaties, subsisting between the United States, and the Cherokees, acknowledge their right as a sovereign nation to govern themselves and all persons who have settled within their territory” free from state legislature.19 He believed that Georgia’s law “interferes with, and attempts to regulate and control, the intercourse with the Cherokee nation, which belongs, exclusively, to congress.”20 Therefore, the Supreme Court holds jurisdiction in this case, not only because the suit is against a state, the case is of appellate nature, but also because it concerns Cherokee Nation as a protected entity of the federal government.
Marshall then goes on to validate the right of the federal government to preside over the Native Americans. When discussing the two different civilizations of the Native Americans and the Europeans, he states “the discovery of either by the other should give the discoverer rights in the country discovered, which annulled the pre-existing rights of its ancient possessors.”21 He leaves the history lesson to discuss “the actual state of things”.22He claims that “power, war, [and] conquest, give rights”23 Marshall argues that the fact that the Europeans discovered the natives, assumed that they were conquered. Also, the United States “succeeded to all the claims of Great Britain, both territorial and political” therefore giving them control over the Native Americans.24 Marshall continues to discuss the European way of dealing with Native Americans. He summarizes by saying “their actual independence was untouched, and their right to self-government acknowledged, they were willing to profess dependence on the power” of the Anglo man. 25 The history lesson continues and Marshall discusses early revolutionary Congress to have American-Indian relations as a prime concern. This congress wanted to “impress on the Cherokees the same respect for congress which was before felt for the king of Great Britain.”26 In exchange for the Cherokees claiming dependence, the United States would protect them.
Finally, Marshall claims, “the Cherokee nation is under the protection of the United States of America, and of no other sovereign whatsoever.”27 Marshall clarified by stating:
[C]onsider the several Indian nations as distinct political communities, having territorial boundaries, within which their authority is exclusive, and having a right to all the lands within those boundaries, which is not only acknowledged, but guaranteed by the United States.28
This is possible because “the treaties and laws of the United States contemplate the Indian territory as completely separated from that of the states”.29 Marshall grants the Cherokee Nation the protection of the federal government, while keeping their sovereignty.
Contemporary writers have criticized Marshall’s opinion heavily. It was seen as “more sympathetic” and “less stigmatic” than Marshall’s earlier cases dealing with the Cherokees, and seen as “a fascinating exercise in converting the natural law argument to arguments based on the sovereign powers of the Union and of his Court.”30 However, as Marshall usually is, he is criticized for his lengthiness and wordiness. White comments by stating:
In an opinion whose total length was twenty-six pages and one fraction of a sentence, history (by which Marshall meant the time between the earliest white settlements in America and the framing of the Constitution) and associated principles occupied seventeen.”31
He goes on:
Of the remaining pages approximately six were devoted to the preliminary procedural and jurisdictional issues, leaving about three pages for explicit constitutional analysis. The structure of the opinion, then, was designed to make Marshall’s familiar point that attention to history and to the principals embodied in that history were not only clarified constitutional analysis, it went a long way toward disposing of the issues to by analyzed.”32
Overall, Marshall’s opinion was received well by the Cherokee’s but criticized by many.
The Cherokee nation seemed to have faired better in the handling of the issues at hand. White comments that:
A social role for Indian tribes in America was cemented by the opinion, and in a sense that role was new: the ‘plight’ of the tribes was to be solved by making them wards of the federal government. But their natural rights remained the same—if existent in republican theory, nonexistent in practice—and their implicit options remained the same.33
Marshall covered the issues regarding jurisdiction over Native American nations as well as what rights the states had over them, which was not many at all. He “acknowledged that the Court held jurisdiction pursuant to its right to review state laws and actions that conflicted with the Constitution” while still keeping states in check.34 White points out that “the fact that the Court had not been unanimous in either Cherokee Nation or Worcester testified to the internal changes a decade had produced, but from a sovereignty perspective the result was the same: a state had defied the Court and had been decisively rebuffed.”35 However, enemies of the Court took the response to this much harsher.
Reactions:
Wilson Lumpkin, newly elected governor of Georgia was very upset by the ruling. Tensions with states’ rights were already brewing and South Carolina was known to be thinking of secession. Lumpkin had this to say about the matter:
[The] majority of judges of the Supreme Court of the United States have not only assumed jurisdiction in the cases of Worcester and Butler, but have, by their decision, attempted to overthrow that essential jurisdiction of the State, in criminal cases, which has been vested by our Constitution in the Superior Courts of our own State. This proves that the States of this Union never did, and never will, permit their political rights to be suspended upon the breath of the agents or trustees to whom they have delegated limited powers to perform certain definite acts.36
The state of Georgia was not happy about this decision, and it threatened a Civil War.
One of the biggest opposers to the ruling was President Andrew Jackson. A president of the people and a veteran of several Indian wars, Jackson was fiercely critical of the Court’s decision. He is reported to have said, “John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it!” However, this is most likely untrue. Jackson actually said, “the decision of the supreme court has fell still born, and they find that they cannot coerce Georgia to yield to its mandate.”37 Jackson had found a legal loophole in the ruling in order to get his way. Marshall and his court could have ruled that Georgia release the prisoners and rebuke to law that infringed on Cherokee and federal jurisdiction, but it was up to Jackson to enforce it. He simply could ignore the problem.
It did not help Marshall’s cause that Jackson had a disdain for this opinion. Jackson was politically supportive of Georgia and wanted the relocation of the Cherokees. There are several instances in Jackson’s letters to political allies and friends of his disdain of the Supreme Court because of their decision. In a letter to Colonel Antony Butler, Jackson writes:
If anything can paralyze the course of the executive, it will be done—they have become envious of its success, both at home and abroad, and Clay, Calhoun, and Webster have [never?] ceased to endeavour to put me down and the supreme court in a late decision, declaring the Cherokees an independent nation, have united, to embarrass me.”38
He seemed to feel that the court made this decision in order to embarrass him, rather than their actual opinion. In a letter to John Randolf, Jackson wrote in the margin, “If I had a seat in the House of Representatives I would move an impeachment against the Chief Justice and Story. Their motives are nothing to me, and Thompson.”39 His obvious hate for the justices were probably one on the many reasons why Jackson never acted to enforce their decision, pressuring Georgia to free Butler and Worcester. The court never retaliated because they feared a Court-Executive rivalry. Boundinot summed up the situation well saying, “It is not now before the great state of Georgia and the poor Cherokees, but between the friend of the judiciary and the enemies of the judiciary.”40 This gave Jackson his needed loophole.
Worcester and Butler remained in prison. They had options to get out, but there were risks involved. White clarifies that “Wirt and Sergeant could inform the Court, at the opening of the 1833 Term, that Georgia had refused to comply with its mandate to release Worcester and Butler, and ask the Justices to certify the refusal and notify the president of the United States.”41 In this case, Jackson would have to get involved, under obligation. Wirt and Sergeant could argue before the court in January of 1833, but “influential Georgians informed them, Jackson would have to enforce the Court’s decree, Georgia might declare the federal treaties and statutes pertaining to the Cherokees ‘null and void’ and other southern states might support Georgia.”42 This could lead to secession. So the fate of two missionaries could have caused a civil war. It was suggested that Worcester and Butler merely get a pardon. However, elite Cherokees thought that this would admit that the states did “have the authority to regulate Indian affairs within their borders” and this would “undermine the autonomy of Indian tribes”43 In the end Governor Wilson persuaded them to accept pardons. According to some reports, “Public criticism of Georgia’s incarceration of the missionaries persuaded Governor Lumpkin to work for their release. He asked the state legislature to repeal the law used to convict them”.44 Worchester ended up joining the Cherokees again until he died. Neither of the men ever accepted or was given a formal pardon, but they were released on a general proclamation on January 14, 1833.
Public opinion dictated the views of many Americans. While there were fearful views like the Cherokee Phoenix which said:
[S]hould the President and Georgia regardless of honor, humanity and justice, exercise power to remove us by force, and such a removal bring ruin and destruction upon our nation, the accountability must rest upon those who ought to be our friends, guardians and protectors,45
most newspapers bashed the Cherokees and the Court. An interesting viewpoint was from the Augusta Chronicle which states that, “One good at least, will grow out of the decision, inasmuch as it must tend to unite the southern states more closely, and show them that they have common cause of self-protection and self-defense against federal usurpation and oppression.”46 This was another warning sign of the upcoming, seemingly inevitable, Civil War. However, some newspapers did not see this coming, or merely refused to believe it. The Newark Advertiser, a paper from New Jersey, stated: “Much as we would regret the necessity of sustaining the supremacy of the laws, by an appeal to arms, still we have no doubt, that every State in the Union, would promptly furnish the Executive of the nation its requisite portion of patriotic freemen, to aid him in upholding the judiciary.”47 Was this paper simply in denial? Or did it truly believe that patriotism would win out over the antagonism of states rights. The National Intelligencer seems to have an answer to that: “We trust that the Unions will endure for many centuries, though more than one state shall rise against it.”48 It goes on to comment on the case saying:
The mandate of the Supreme Court us directed to the Superior Court for the county of Gwinnet, in the state of Georgia; and it requires of that court that it do release the missionaries, who are confined at hard labor in the penitentiary…. If the court obey the mandate, it is well, and no more is to be said or done. If the court does not obey the mandate, application will, we suppose, be made to the Supreme Court, as its next term…”49
Overall, it seems that more sympathy came from northern newspapers, while more threats of secession and anger came from southern newspapers.
Changes in Society:
The ruling of the Worcester case did nothing to help the Cherokees in the long run. Urofsky states “Jackson’s inaction proved to be the death blow to Cherokee hopes to remain in their southeastern homeland.”50 A small faction of Cherokees signed a treaty in 1835 that relocated the tribe westward. The majority of Cherokees were not in agreement with the treaty, but “[w]ith Jackson’s 1830 removal legislation in effect, the federal government began to enter into agreements with southeastern tribes for the cession of their lands”51 The treaty was ratified by the Senate in 1836 where it was passed by just one vote. This directly led to a mass movement of Cherokees out west. Urofsky states that “[p]erhaps as many as 4,000 Cherokees, roughly one-fourth of the nation’s population, died on the removal paths that came to be known as the Trail of Tears.”52 The Cherokees were sentenced to “confinement on federal reservations and the consequent legitimization of their ‘dependant’ status.”53
This extremely sad massacre of people still resonates in the hearts and minds of Native Americans today.
Effects on the Law:
Although this decision did not work out favorably for the Cherokees, it provided the precedent for many court cases dealing not only with Native Americans and the concept of sovereignty, but also other racial minority cases. Most of the Native American cases dealt with the power of federal laws on Indian reservations. In U.S. v. Holiday54 it was argued that Congressional bans on selling liquor was constitutionally applicable to reservations. In Wisconsin Potowatomies of Hannahville Indian Community v. Houston55, it was argued that tribal law won over state law when dealing with the custody of children domiciled on reservation land.
The track of racial minority cases was also changed. Before the Trail of Tears, “the Cherokees could claim that in their struggle with Georgia they had emerged as the winners.”56 However, it was not really a win legally. The Cherokees now made themselves wards of the federal government. Federal power could potentially place Indians in the position of abandoning their cultural heritage—becoming ‘civilized’—or being dispossessed of their land and forced to emigrate,”57 which they did. This did not bring the Cherokees any more freedom or respect. What was really learned was that: “in the case of racial minorities whose ‘character’ or ‘condition’ made their amalgamation into white society precarious, natural rights principles simply did not apply in their full force.”58 White summarizes by saying, “Natural law was not only not ‘paramount to all other laws’ in such cases, it had very little force.”59 This is the legacy of the Marshall court, to undermine natural law, relying more on ‘the actual nature of things’. In the end, “[r]acial minorities received a message from the Marshall Court that they were to receive repeatedly in the subsequent course of American history: liberty and equality in America have been regularly contingent on whose freedom and whose equal treatment is at issue.”60 The Worcester case left a long legacy for racial minorities to try and solve.
Overall, Worcester v. Georgia provided the ground work for Native American tribes to be eradicated out of the states and out west under the watchful eye and strong stick of the federal government. In a historical opinion, Marshall displayed justification for jurisdiction to remain to the United States government rather than states. This decision was another case in which states were denied what they believed was their rights, a major conflict leading up to the Civil War.
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Monday, December 8, 2008
Zoot Suit Riots: A Study of Hate and Hats
There are a few moments in American history that can sum up an entire movement. The Zoot-Suit Riots exposed the ironic racism during World War II, showed how the war effort back on American soil could be the cause of dismay and corruption, and encompassed the groundwork for a social revolution dealing with racial prejudices. The city of Los Angeles provides the prefect scenery for this event, a city of many, many races and cultures, crammed into an industrial machine of white-washed society. The Zoot-Suit Riots provide for a part of American history that often gets overshadowed by the war: the embedded racism at home, while ironically trying to fight racism abroad.
Los Angeles, 1943, was a tough town to be in. Conflicted and stretched because of the way, citizens witnessed the containment of Asian Americans and the estrangement of African Americans. However, for ten days in June, Los Angeles would feel the pinch of a new racial movement, spurred by the ten days of abuse towards Mexican Americans. Already, there was tension between Anglo-Americans and Mexican-Americans, mainly centered on labor disputes. The tension added by the war, the draft, and United States policy on racial prejudice only sped up this time bomb of racial and societal tension. On June 3, “[m]arching 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”. 1 These were not only Mexican Americans, but also African Americans and Filipinos.
What was soon called the Zoot-Suit Riots was sparked by the Sleepy Lagoon affair, which took place in December of the previous year. Very simply, the affair centered on the murder of a Mexican-American who was part of this zoot-suit generation. The murder brought into public life the image of the Mexican, zoot-suit wearing gangster, prone to violence and chaos. David E. Hayes-Bautista comments that, “The Sleepy Lagoon trial and the subsequent ‘Zoot-Suit’ Riots in Los Angeles seemed to prove that Richard Henry Dana was right about those lazy, fatalistic, present-oriented Latinos”. 2 Even local government officials sponsored this outrageous notion of stereotyping. For example:
The Los Angeles County sheriff, Captain E. Duran Ayers, testified that the murder was, no doubt, a result of the uniquely Latino racial character traits of the defendants: “The Mexican element… desire[s] to kill, or at least let blood… When there is added to this inborn characteristic that has come through the ages, the use of liquor, then we certainly have crimes of violence”. 3
This image of the Mexican American stuck in the minds of the American people during the riots the following June. Those zoot-suiters that were convicted were all Mexican Americans and were treated quite unfairly during their imprisonment and also their trial. This only added to the image of the Mexican gangster.
The riots themselves were caused by a rumor that a group of zoot-suiters attacked a group of servicemen, who were stationed in Los Angeles, because they were flirting with some Mexican American women. Whether or not this was true, the rumor itself inspired hundred of servicemen, mainly sailors with the Navy, to roam the streets of Los Angeles, expressing their anger at the group. Hayes-Bautista describes the event stating, a number of servicemen descended on downtown and East Los Angeles and attacked zoot-suited Latinos, stripping them of their symbolically offensive clothing and beating them”.4 However, these victims were not defended and many were blamed for the riots themselves, being further abused and arrested by law enforcement. The Los Angeles Police Department turned what they considered a patriotic blind eye to the crimes of the servicemen, seeing the riots as a way of cleaning up the streets of the city. In can be said that “the victims of mob violence were portrayed as deviants whose dress seemed to demand rebuke”. 5 Hundreds of Mexican Americans were arrested during and after the ten day raid and many were convicted of weapons and public indecency, although no servicemen were convicted and only a handful arrested. Providing the press coverage that saw these zoot-suiters as victims, Time Magazine criticized the Los Angeles Police Department reporting that:
Scores of Mexican youths had been stripped of their pants (some of them on the stages of movie houses), beaten and then arrested by the Los Angeles police for "vagrancy" and "rioting." (The police practice was to accompany the caravans in police cars, watch the beatings and then jail the victims. Their orders apparently were to let the Shore Patrol and the Military Police handle the rioting sailors. The service police were futile.).6
However, most of the press saw these zoot-suiters as delinquents and mobsters rather than victims.
The press coverage of the riots did not help the Mexican American cause. Most of the press covered the story much like the following:
Subdued and no longer ready to do battle, twenty-eight zoot-suiters, stripped of their garish clothing and with county jail barbers hopefully eyeing their flowing duck-tail haircuts, languished behind bars today after a second night of battle with of fleers and service men. The arrests came after a "war" declared by service men, mostly sailors, on zoos-suit gangs which have been preying on the East Side as well as molesting civilians. 7
With words such as “battle”, “garish”, “preying”, and “molesting”, it is very hard to look beyond the negative stereotype being enforced onto the deeper meanings of the riots themselves. In fact, “The press treated the affair as a joke rather than as a jeremiad, and nothing in the coverage was likely to provoke readers to think about the racial implications of the riots”. 8 This neglect for what was going on slowed the process for revealing the true nature of the riots.
But why were these zoot-suiters targeted in the first place? In the conventional history there seem to be two camps. The first is that zoot-suiters were seen as unpatriotic and anti-military. The second is supportive of the idea of deep-rooted racial hate. Both of these seem to be correct in their own way; however the combination of the two camps seems to be a better study that has not been explored in extent.
In regards to the first camp, many saw the zoot-suiters as unpatriotic because of their lifestyles. Many even saw the zoot-suits themselves as anti-American. Hayes-Bautista comments that:
The press reported public worries about the unpatriotic appearance and behavior of Latinos wearing zoot suits—long-waisted, wide-lapelled coats paired with baggy, chest-high pants with narrow cuffs. Newspapers editorialized about menacing crowds of these outlandishly dressed young men who were described as unpatriotic. 9
There were many reasons for this assumption. These youths were seen as wasting their time and not helping with the war effort. Portrayed as un-American draft dodgers, this lifestyle caused a rift between zoot-suiters and servicemen. The zoot-suits themselves were seen as showy and overly extravagant, things that people felt were not appropriate for wartime. The bright-colored suits drew attention to these young men (and some women) when people felt all focus should be on defeating the country’s enemies. Also, the lavish wardrobe suggested wealth, even though zoot-suits were worn mainly by the middle class youth. Considered a waste of much needed money and resources, the zoot-suiters, also known as pachucos, were generally looked at with disdain. This situation is well-described by Cosgrove:
In an attempt to institute a 26% cut-back in the use of fabrics, the War Production Board drew up regulations for the wartime manufacture of what Esquire magazine called, "streamlined suits by Uncle Sam." The regulations effectively forbade the manufacture of zoot-suits and most legitimate tailoring companies ceased to manufacture or advertise any suits that fell outside the War Production Board's guide lines. Thus the polarization between servicemen and pachucos was immediately visible: the chino shirt and battledress were evidently uniforms of patriotism, whereas wearing a zoot-suit was a deliberate and public way of flouting the regulations of rationing. The zoot-suit was a moral and social scandal in the eyes of the authorities, not simply because it was associated with petty crime and violence, but because it openly snubbed the laws of rationing.10
This view of a disregard for the restrictions imposed on a wartime society, coupled with the spreading stereotype of the young Mexican Americans, caused tension to run high concerning these individuals.
This tension was also aided by the growing paranoia about Mexico joining the Axis powers. Mexican immigration and labor was very important not only for the West, but also for the war effort. The Brachero Program, a very successful system for allowing Mexican laborers to temporarily live in the United States as long as they are working to manufacture war supplies, was considered “Mexico’s single most important contribution to the war effort”.11 In fact, the grip on Mexico was so tight, it inspired the Good Neighbor Policy of censoring materials published about Latinos. The United States government was very aware of Mexico’s threat to the war. So much so that the government did not interfere with the rioting servicemen until the Mexican Ambassador mentioned the crimes of hate that were occurring. Many historians believe that:
It was the fear of an international incident that could only have an adverse effect on California's economy, rather than any real concern for the social conditions of the Mexican American community, that motivated Governor Warren of California to order a public investigation into the causes of the riots. 12
The paranoia of Mexican alliances was so great that when investigating the Zoot-Suit Riots “[t]he un-American activities investigation was ordered to determine whether the present Zoot-Suit Riots were sponsored by Nazi agencies attempting to spread disunity between the United States and Latin-American countries’”.13 This paranoia was also assisted by the ingrained racism in American society.
Racism in America was nothing new at this point, and neither was racism towards Mexicans. Seen as a huge potential for cheap labor, Mexicans in the southwestern region of the country witnessed much racial hate and abuse from their employers, as well as neighboring Americans. Mexicans were considered ‘job-stealers’, taking low-end jobs for cheaper than the white man would. Due to these views, the negative image of Mexicans as lazy and corrupt spread throughout much of America. This, coupled with the fact that many of the servicemen stationed in Los Angeles at the time of the riots were not from the southwest and had never been personally exposed the Mexican Americans before, only knowing of the hate and stereotyping revealed by white audiences, leads to believe that the riots also had a lot of racial prejudice as backing. Ironically, these servicemen with such racist views were fighting a war against the oppression of a group based on their race, such as the Nazis were oppressing the Jews.
Many contemporary histories cover these previous statements of this study, usually leaning one way or another, but few address the reason why a Mexican American would wear a zoot-suit. These outfits came out of the jazz age and were coupled with a search for identity in a divided society. These youthful Mexican Americans did not see themselves as Mexican, like their parents, or as Americans, like the servicemen beating them. Therefore, they created their own culture, their own definition of who they were. Cosgrove, one of the only historians that address the wearing of the zoot-suit, comments that the zoot-suit was “an emblem of ethnicity and a way of negotiating an identity. The zoot-suit was a refusal: a subcultural gesture that refused to concede to the manners of subservience”. 14 He goes on further to say the zoot-suit allowed these youths to “[flaunt] their difference rather than disguise their alienation”.15 The wearing of the zoot-suit, with the background of the racial and patriotic prejudices associated with them, would make for a great microhistory.
Studying this as a microhistory would provide a new look at the struggle of Mexican Americans during their migration and integration into American culture. It would also be beneficial when studying the idea of “the war at home” during World War II. This study would also be useful for the broader study of the effect of fashion on history. This topic is narrowly tailored and on a small scale that Ginsburg and Levi discussed, giving a viewpoint of history from ‘the bottom-up’. The Zoot-Suit Riots are an important part of history that often does not get studied, but encompasses many issues that are still relevant in our history today.
Los Angeles, 1943, was a tough town to be in. Conflicted and stretched because of the way, citizens witnessed the containment of Asian Americans and the estrangement of African Americans. However, for ten days in June, Los Angeles would feel the pinch of a new racial movement, spurred by the ten days of abuse towards Mexican Americans. Already, there was tension between Anglo-Americans and Mexican-Americans, mainly centered on labor disputes. The tension added by the war, the draft, and United States policy on racial prejudice only sped up this time bomb of racial and societal tension. On June 3, “[m]arching 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”. 1 These were not only Mexican Americans, but also African Americans and Filipinos.
What was soon called the Zoot-Suit Riots was sparked by the Sleepy Lagoon affair, which took place in December of the previous year. Very simply, the affair centered on the murder of a Mexican-American who was part of this zoot-suit generation. The murder brought into public life the image of the Mexican, zoot-suit wearing gangster, prone to violence and chaos. David E. Hayes-Bautista comments that, “The Sleepy Lagoon trial and the subsequent ‘Zoot-Suit’ Riots in Los Angeles seemed to prove that Richard Henry Dana was right about those lazy, fatalistic, present-oriented Latinos”. 2 Even local government officials sponsored this outrageous notion of stereotyping. For example:
The Los Angeles County sheriff, Captain E. Duran Ayers, testified that the murder was, no doubt, a result of the uniquely Latino racial character traits of the defendants: “The Mexican element… desire[s] to kill, or at least let blood… When there is added to this inborn characteristic that has come through the ages, the use of liquor, then we certainly have crimes of violence”. 3
This image of the Mexican American stuck in the minds of the American people during the riots the following June. Those zoot-suiters that were convicted were all Mexican Americans and were treated quite unfairly during their imprisonment and also their trial. This only added to the image of the Mexican gangster.
The riots themselves were caused by a rumor that a group of zoot-suiters attacked a group of servicemen, who were stationed in Los Angeles, because they were flirting with some Mexican American women. Whether or not this was true, the rumor itself inspired hundred of servicemen, mainly sailors with the Navy, to roam the streets of Los Angeles, expressing their anger at the group. Hayes-Bautista describes the event stating, a number of servicemen descended on downtown and East Los Angeles and attacked zoot-suited Latinos, stripping them of their symbolically offensive clothing and beating them”.4 However, these victims were not defended and many were blamed for the riots themselves, being further abused and arrested by law enforcement. The Los Angeles Police Department turned what they considered a patriotic blind eye to the crimes of the servicemen, seeing the riots as a way of cleaning up the streets of the city. In can be said that “the victims of mob violence were portrayed as deviants whose dress seemed to demand rebuke”. 5 Hundreds of Mexican Americans were arrested during and after the ten day raid and many were convicted of weapons and public indecency, although no servicemen were convicted and only a handful arrested. Providing the press coverage that saw these zoot-suiters as victims, Time Magazine criticized the Los Angeles Police Department reporting that:
Scores of Mexican youths had been stripped of their pants (some of them on the stages of movie houses), beaten and then arrested by the Los Angeles police for "vagrancy" and "rioting." (The police practice was to accompany the caravans in police cars, watch the beatings and then jail the victims. Their orders apparently were to let the Shore Patrol and the Military Police handle the rioting sailors. The service police were futile.).6
However, most of the press saw these zoot-suiters as delinquents and mobsters rather than victims.
The press coverage of the riots did not help the Mexican American cause. Most of the press covered the story much like the following:
Subdued and no longer ready to do battle, twenty-eight zoot-suiters, stripped of their garish clothing and with county jail barbers hopefully eyeing their flowing duck-tail haircuts, languished behind bars today after a second night of battle with of fleers and service men. The arrests came after a "war" declared by service men, mostly sailors, on zoos-suit gangs which have been preying on the East Side as well as molesting civilians. 7
With words such as “battle”, “garish”, “preying”, and “molesting”, it is very hard to look beyond the negative stereotype being enforced onto the deeper meanings of the riots themselves. In fact, “The press treated the affair as a joke rather than as a jeremiad, and nothing in the coverage was likely to provoke readers to think about the racial implications of the riots”. 8 This neglect for what was going on slowed the process for revealing the true nature of the riots.
But why were these zoot-suiters targeted in the first place? In the conventional history there seem to be two camps. The first is that zoot-suiters were seen as unpatriotic and anti-military. The second is supportive of the idea of deep-rooted racial hate. Both of these seem to be correct in their own way; however the combination of the two camps seems to be a better study that has not been explored in extent.
In regards to the first camp, many saw the zoot-suiters as unpatriotic because of their lifestyles. Many even saw the zoot-suits themselves as anti-American. Hayes-Bautista comments that:
The press reported public worries about the unpatriotic appearance and behavior of Latinos wearing zoot suits—long-waisted, wide-lapelled coats paired with baggy, chest-high pants with narrow cuffs. Newspapers editorialized about menacing crowds of these outlandishly dressed young men who were described as unpatriotic. 9
There were many reasons for this assumption. These youths were seen as wasting their time and not helping with the war effort. Portrayed as un-American draft dodgers, this lifestyle caused a rift between zoot-suiters and servicemen. The zoot-suits themselves were seen as showy and overly extravagant, things that people felt were not appropriate for wartime. The bright-colored suits drew attention to these young men (and some women) when people felt all focus should be on defeating the country’s enemies. Also, the lavish wardrobe suggested wealth, even though zoot-suits were worn mainly by the middle class youth. Considered a waste of much needed money and resources, the zoot-suiters, also known as pachucos, were generally looked at with disdain. This situation is well-described by Cosgrove:
In an attempt to institute a 26% cut-back in the use of fabrics, the War Production Board drew up regulations for the wartime manufacture of what Esquire magazine called, "streamlined suits by Uncle Sam." The regulations effectively forbade the manufacture of zoot-suits and most legitimate tailoring companies ceased to manufacture or advertise any suits that fell outside the War Production Board's guide lines. Thus the polarization between servicemen and pachucos was immediately visible: the chino shirt and battledress were evidently uniforms of patriotism, whereas wearing a zoot-suit was a deliberate and public way of flouting the regulations of rationing. The zoot-suit was a moral and social scandal in the eyes of the authorities, not simply because it was associated with petty crime and violence, but because it openly snubbed the laws of rationing.10
This view of a disregard for the restrictions imposed on a wartime society, coupled with the spreading stereotype of the young Mexican Americans, caused tension to run high concerning these individuals.
This tension was also aided by the growing paranoia about Mexico joining the Axis powers. Mexican immigration and labor was very important not only for the West, but also for the war effort. The Brachero Program, a very successful system for allowing Mexican laborers to temporarily live in the United States as long as they are working to manufacture war supplies, was considered “Mexico’s single most important contribution to the war effort”.11 In fact, the grip on Mexico was so tight, it inspired the Good Neighbor Policy of censoring materials published about Latinos. The United States government was very aware of Mexico’s threat to the war. So much so that the government did not interfere with the rioting servicemen until the Mexican Ambassador mentioned the crimes of hate that were occurring. Many historians believe that:
It was the fear of an international incident that could only have an adverse effect on California's economy, rather than any real concern for the social conditions of the Mexican American community, that motivated Governor Warren of California to order a public investigation into the causes of the riots. 12
The paranoia of Mexican alliances was so great that when investigating the Zoot-Suit Riots “[t]he un-American activities investigation was ordered to determine whether the present Zoot-Suit Riots were sponsored by Nazi agencies attempting to spread disunity between the United States and Latin-American countries’”.13 This paranoia was also assisted by the ingrained racism in American society.
Racism in America was nothing new at this point, and neither was racism towards Mexicans. Seen as a huge potential for cheap labor, Mexicans in the southwestern region of the country witnessed much racial hate and abuse from their employers, as well as neighboring Americans. Mexicans were considered ‘job-stealers’, taking low-end jobs for cheaper than the white man would. Due to these views, the negative image of Mexicans as lazy and corrupt spread throughout much of America. This, coupled with the fact that many of the servicemen stationed in Los Angeles at the time of the riots were not from the southwest and had never been personally exposed the Mexican Americans before, only knowing of the hate and stereotyping revealed by white audiences, leads to believe that the riots also had a lot of racial prejudice as backing. Ironically, these servicemen with such racist views were fighting a war against the oppression of a group based on their race, such as the Nazis were oppressing the Jews.
Many contemporary histories cover these previous statements of this study, usually leaning one way or another, but few address the reason why a Mexican American would wear a zoot-suit. These outfits came out of the jazz age and were coupled with a search for identity in a divided society. These youthful Mexican Americans did not see themselves as Mexican, like their parents, or as Americans, like the servicemen beating them. Therefore, they created their own culture, their own definition of who they were. Cosgrove, one of the only historians that address the wearing of the zoot-suit, comments that the zoot-suit was “an emblem of ethnicity and a way of negotiating an identity. The zoot-suit was a refusal: a subcultural gesture that refused to concede to the manners of subservience”. 14 He goes on further to say the zoot-suit allowed these youths to “[flaunt] their difference rather than disguise their alienation”.15 The wearing of the zoot-suit, with the background of the racial and patriotic prejudices associated with them, would make for a great microhistory.
Studying this as a microhistory would provide a new look at the struggle of Mexican Americans during their migration and integration into American culture. It would also be beneficial when studying the idea of “the war at home” during World War II. This study would also be useful for the broader study of the effect of fashion on history. This topic is narrowly tailored and on a small scale that Ginsburg and Levi discussed, giving a viewpoint of history from ‘the bottom-up’. The Zoot-Suit Riots are an important part of history that often does not get studied, but encompasses many issues that are still relevant in our history today.
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