Tom Moran and Tom Sewell Fantasy by the Sea Peace Press: Culver City, CA, 1980 (1979) (Originally published by Beyond Baroque Foundation with a grant from the Visual Arts Program of the National Endowment for the Arts), 1943
Wartime Prejudice
" . . .
" . . . Windows and lamp globes were painted black and "dimouts" darkened the amusement area. But soldiers and sailors came to the piers and boardwalk on weekend leave.
" . . . Zoot suits had become the style with a large number of Mexican-American youths who frequented the beaches. The boys had duck-tail haircuts, pancake hats and peg-top trousers with "reet" pleats. They carried long glittering watch chains that hung out of openings in their drape coats. . . .
" . . . May 8, 1943. Rumors had circulated along the beach that a "Pachuco" had knifed a sailor. A mob of 100 servicemen and local youths attacked the Aragon Ballroom on Lick Pier intent on running the Mexican-Americans out of town. The brawl erupted at 1:40 a.m. with nearly 2,500 spectators and participants crowding the intersection of Navy Street and Ocean Front Walk.
"Thirteen zoot suiters were arrested and twenty-eight more were taken into custody following the melee . . . police roadblocks turned back over a hundred zoot suiters bound for Venice the next day . . .
"The Mexican-Americans were released by Judge Art Guerin . . .
"Later, similar riots in downtown Los Angeles would escalate into the ugliest of racial confrontations."