The zoot suit riots, according to my understanding of the film, were a racialized backlash towards the Hispanic community of East Los Angeles. The zoot suits which began as wide bell bottom like pants for men during outings to jazz clubs became a racial marker after the coverage of the Sleepy Lagoon Trial gained attention across California. These riots broke out due to the uncertainty the trial brought over the Hispanic community. Rioting began the night after a fight initiated by one Sailor against a Latino wearing a zoot suit broken out. That night Sailors took to the streets and attacked any Hispanic man wearing a zoot suit just based on appearance. I personally do not believe that the name ‘Zoot Suits’ gives the accurate description of the events that took place during the time period. …show more content…
The role of authority figures and U.S. government institutions is to help the community however, in the film the role was not exactly helpful. The imprisonment of the twenty members of the 38th street gang were seen by many as rash, unfair, and wrongful. The 38th street gang was sent to prison after a short three-month trial while the three girls called as witnesses were sent to a reformatory academy until they reached the age of twenty-one. After years of the release of the twenty wrongly imprisoned men, they commonly returned to jail. Although their initial imprisonment was not a direct blame in the film, I believe it did have a significant influence. Race played an enormous role in the riots ad unequal repercussion. The Sleepy Lagoon Trial set a wave of ‘uneasiness’ guided towards the Hispanic community of East Los Angeles which as a byproduct resulted in the commencement of the zoot suit riots. Their riots left many injured until city boundaries were called off limits to military personal hauling the
To accomplish this, the Kerner Commission visited riot cities, spoke with witnesses and sought out help from other professionals. According to this documentary, 126 cities were hit and broken by these major race riots. The two main cities were Detroit, Michigan and Newark, New Jersey. 82% of the deaths and over half of the injuries occurred in these two cities. Towards the end, as the tension and conflict really thicken, the president even had to send in the army to put a halt to this violence that was corrupting our cities and nation. Yet, this riots were not your “typical” riots, they were described as unusual, unpredictable, irregular and complex. According to a study, most rioters were young black men, between the ages of 15-24 and about 74% were brought up from the south. In context to the documentary and the report, these riots were brought on by actions and responses of police force, local officials and the National Guard. This idea was brought about because some black people thought of the police as just a sign of white privilege and power. However, according to citizens in Milwaukee, Wisconsin they were “protests because of the loss of jobs.” But the youngest commission chair, who was featured in the documentary, Fred Harris, disagrees and says that they were not protests, there was no planning with a clear goal in
The years of injustices at the LAPD came to a head-on August 29, 1970, during an anti-Vietnam war protest went from a peaceful assembly of the Latino community until a disturbance made the LAPD spring into action to “keep the peace” — through violent means, according to Edward J. Escobar by employing tactics to like “... [charging] the crowd, shooting tear gas, and beating fleeing demonstrators with nightsticks.” (Escobar Par 2), to make crowds disperse which — unsurprisingly — caused panic which induced chaos. Up until the police had overreacted to a peaceful demonstration of civil disobedience and gathering of Chicanos against the government’s actions in Vietnam, there was nothing illegal being done, the only offense the protestors had committed was going against the government. Once the dust settled, police had arrested over one hundred people, forty people injured, and three lay dead or dying. One of the dead was Ruben Salazar (Escobar Par 2). Salazar was journalist killed by a tear gas canister was made a martyr who died at the hands of the LAPD because of his history of giving voices to the more vocal critics of the police. His death was used by Mexican-American activists who referred to themselves as Chicanos. The Chicano movement was in its infancy but was quickly growing because the tension between the LAPD and the Latino community was no longer one sided, the Chicano side was now organizing to fight for their rights, but the LAPD being the authority still had the upper-hand. According to Edward Escobar the LAPD engaged in intimidation tactics, investigations, and smear tactics to undermine the movement, but is was to no avail (Escobar Par 5). There did not result in a single successful prosecution of a major Chicano movement figure (Escobar Par 27). The police not only suppressed the Chicano community by trying the bring down the full power of
As said by Governor George Ryan, “Since 1973, over 130 people have been released from death rows throughout the country due to evidence of their wrongful convictions.” With each of these wronged convictions, the victim who should rightfully be convicted was able to walk free and possibly continue to commit crimes. Many of these wronged convictions entail parts of conflict theory with them because the dominant group will view things that they believe are socially deviant as criminal. The example in class of the 1992 Chicago gang ordinance shows how the dominant group, the police force, viewed standing on a street corner as socially deviant and thus, labeled it criminal. In The Central Park Five, the five who were convicted were in Central Park late at night, which was socially deviant. Since there was crime that was committed that night, it was easy to take the socially deviant situation of the kids being in the park late at night, them being in the same place as the crime, and them all being non-white and the victim being white and turn the crime on them. At the start of the night, there were kids who were throwing rocks at cars and assaulting homeless people to the extent of smashing one with a beer bottle. Out of all of the kids who were in the park that night, when they all took off running, it didn’t matter which five were stopped and taken to the police station, as long as there were non-white and in the park that night they could have been one of the “central park five”. “Central park five” turns into a label knowing that regardless of who the kid was and their background, the officers involved were going to manipulate they into confessing to the crime and then end up being convicted. Crime today involves conflict theory and can
One of the most highlighted points I think that Tuttle makes throughout the book is the role of the police. You can apply their actions to all of the riots. They definitely played an important role in these riots. All throughout the book, they were instigators. They made false reports of...
The zoot suit symbolized several different things for the Mexican American population in the Los Angeles community. Not only was it a symbol of pride in their Mexican heritage, but also a form of rebellion from the norms emplaced upon the Mexican teenagers by their parents. These suits were also a symbol of unity, these young men wanted to look different and feel as if they’re culture could be something they could display and be proud of. This whole image was seen by the modern culture of Los Angeles to be “gang” related or distasteful. These “Pachuco” or punks often spoke a hybrid of English and Spanish, this was known as “calo.” However, many of the Mexican American teenagers at the time, spoke only English. The outfit often included pants wide at the knee often 40 inches or more, a broad shouldered jacket, hat, chain wallet and shined shoes called “calcos.”
Zoot Suit, a play written by Luis Valdez, depicts the racially charged trial of the Sleepy Lagoon Case of 1942 in which the courts charged a group of Pachucos with the murder of another Mexican-American. During the 1940s, many Mexican-Americans suffered widespread discrimination as dramatized in Zoot Suit. To combat such discrimination, many Chicano youth wore stylized zoot suits, adorned with oversized jackets during fabric shortages, as a form of social and political rebellion. Zoot Suiters felt disempowered by their position within society and used their fashion to send out a message and as a means to regain their masculinity. The Pachucos were accused of the murder of a fellow Mexican-American not because of clear evidence or proof, but because of their ethnic identity, renegade style of dressing, and behavior.
This incident would have produced nothing more than another report for resisting arrest had a bystander, George Holliday, not videotaped the altercation. Holliday then released the footage to the media. LAPD Officers Lawrence Powell, Stacey Koon, Timothy Wind and Theodore Brisino were indicted and charged with assaulting King. Superior Court Judge Stanley Weisberg ordered a change of venue to suburban Simi Valley, which is a predominantly white suburb of Los Angeles. All officers were subsequently acquitted by a jury comprised of 10 whites, one Hispanic and one Asian, and the African American community responded in a manner far worse than the Watts Riots of 1965. ?While the King beating was tragic, it was just the trigger that released the rage of a community in economic strife and a police department in serious dec...
The Chicago riot was the most serious of the multiple that happened during the Progressive Era. The riot started on July 27th after a seventeen year old African American, Eugene Williams, did not know what he was doing and obliviously crossed the boundary of a city beach. Consequently, a white man on the beach began stoning him. Williams, exhausted, could not get himself out of the water and eventually drowned. The police officer at the scene refused to listen to eyewitness accounts and restrained from arresting the white man. With this in mind, African Americans attacked the police officer. As word spread of the violence, and the accounts distorted themselves, almost all areas in the city, black and white neighborhoods, became informed. By Monday morning, everyone went to work and went about their business as usual, but on their way home, African Americans were pulled from trolleys and beaten, stabbed, and shot by white “ruffians”. Whites raided the black neighborhoods and shot people from their cars randomly, as well as threw rocks at their windows. In retaliation, African Americans mounted sniper ambushes and physically fought back. Despite the call to the Illinois militia to help the Chicago police on the fourth day, the rioting did not subside until the sixth day. Even then, thirty eight
On the night of August 11, 1965 the Watts community of Los Angeles County went up in flames. A riot broke out and lasted until the seventeenth of August. After residents witnessed a Los Angeles police officer using excessive force while arresting an African American male. Along with this male, the police officers also arrested his brother and mother. Twenty-seven years later in 1992 a riot known as both the Rodney King riots and the LA riots broke out. Both share the similar circumstances as to why the riots started. Before each riot there was some kind of tension between police officers and the African American people of Los Angeles. In both cases African Americans were still dealing with high unemployment rates, substandard housing, and inadequate schools. Add these three problems with policemen having a heavy hand and a riot will happen. Many of the primary sources I will you in this analysis for the Watts and the LA riots can be found in newspaper articles written at the time of these events. First-hand accounts from people living during the riots are also used.
While the L.A. riots were far larger, and the effects are still being felt, I still feel that the Watts riots had more of an impact. I had known about the riots previously, as I had been interested and looked into it on my own, but I had not looked into the economic at the time. Seeing that there were not any real economic effects from the riot, and in-fact some things may have gotten even worse, changes how I think of riots reported on in the media. Although there has been little in empirical studies done on the impact of the Watts riots, which is odd due to their importance in recent American history, especially now, it is clear that the riots started a trend of misguided racial tension that continues to this day, one that has prolonged the suffering and disenfranchisement of Blacks in the United States. While I do not believe another riot is the answer, researching this riot has shown me that while the riots can be considered important, the reality is that their effects on society are quite minimal, and only the political discussion of the riots is what has lasted to today. The failure of any real reform since then of the treatment of Blacks in general, let alone in the criminal justice world, shows to me a real lack of justice in the United
There is some history that explains why the incident on that Chicago beach escalated to the point where 23 blacks and 15 whites were killed, 500 more were injured and 1,000 blacks were left homeless (96). When the local police were summoned to the scene, they refused to arrest the white man identified as the one who instigated the attack. It was generally acknowledged that the state should “look the other way” as long as private violence stayed at a low level (Waskow 265). This police indifference, viewed by most blacks as racial bias, played a major role in enraging the black population. In the wake of the Chica...
Rios describes how patrol officer didn’t really care, or to help these youth. Instead of helping out, law enforcement targeted these young deviant boys. Rios shows us a depth overview of Oakland Police Department. In doing so, he shows us how the miscommunication, and the inequality these law agencies in the inner city ghetto
The important little factors that led up to becoming huge and having great effects on Chicago race riots. For blacks and whites both the riot was just a built up increase of hostility that has been going on for quite some time. One thing that can be said about Chicago incidents seem to be the more ruthless and aggressive when compared to others. It may have been because of the black’s resist not to lie down and fight back. Most of the time it causes even more anger when compared to a nonviolent approach. In addition, the Chicago riots and the incidents that led up to it were huge in status. A young black man named Eugene Williams swam past an unseen line of segregation at a popular public beach on Lake Michigan, Chicago. He was stoned by several
The three men, Said, Hubert, and Vinz were without a doubt unfairly discriminated and mistreated by the cops. Simply because of where they came from, the police never gave them the full respect everyone is entitled to have. The police did not even know them or have proof they committed a crime or offense, but still beat Said and Hubert up severely. Even when a group of the people from the projects were just on the roof top, not causing trouble, they were forced to get off and disperse. And when they refused, the situation got out of hand and violence was
...bers fired upon police forces. Despite the controversy of May 13th, it exemplifies criminalization. The authorities felt threatened by a particular group, in this case MOVE, an organization predominantly African-American with radical political notions. Although race may not have been affected the motives of the group it is possible that they affected the actions taken against them. Keep in mind that although African-Americans had equal rights in the 1970s and 1980s, they were still a minority and heavily discriminated against.