Moving to the Cities
By the end
of the Depression, the majority of the Mexican American community
was no longer rural. Immigrants and their families had begun leaving
the countryside for America's growing industrial cities around
the turn of the 20th century. The First World War and Depression
accelerated the process. Cities like Los Angeles, San Antonio,
Detroit, and Chicago soon had large and growing Mexican American
communities. With this transition came new social tensions, as
members of more established ethnic groups reacted to the arrival
of Mexican Americans.
In Los Angeles
in 1942, these tensions erupted in a week-long race riot--the
Zoot Suit Riot. A zoot suit was a popular outfit with young African
American and Mexican American men in the 1940s. Most zoot suits
sported extra-wide shoulders, knee-length coats, and cuffed baggy
pants, sometimes topped with a porkpie hat.
After a fight broke out in central Los Angeles
between a group of zoot-suited teenagers and sailors on leave,
some sailors began roaming the streets seeking revenge. What started
out as a brawl quickly turned into an invasion, as gangs of servicemen
took over sections of the city, beating any Mexican American men
and boys they could find.
The mobs stopped traffic, searched streetcars, and even pulled their
victims out of movie theaters. After five days of bloodshed, Los
Angeles was declared off limits to sailors, and the attacks ended.
However, the racial tensions that fueled the riots also helped trigger
a wave of organized activism that would soon propel the Mexican
American community to new prominence in American public life.
|