80 Years Ago, the Murder of a Young Mexican-American Man Ignited a Firestorm of Racial Tensions in World War II-Era Los Angeles. This was the topic of Luis Valdez’s Los Angeles hit musical play, Zoot Suit which premiered at the Mark Taper Forum in 1978. Now PBS is re-broadcasting the Zoot Suit Riot, Written, directed and produced by Joseph Tovares and narrated by Hector Elizondo this program was originally broadcast in 2002. On Tuesday, March 29, 2022, you can watch the documentary with re-inactments at 9:00-10:00 p.m. ET (check local listings) on PBS, PBS.org and the PBS Video App.
It was Los Angeles 1942 wartime tensions, an influx of servicemen, overzealous authority, rebellious youth and racial strife brought the city to its breaking point. At the center of the conflict were 50,000 sailors, itching to blow off steam before they shipped off to war, and Mexican American teens called “zoot suiters” for the baggy pants and long jackets they wore.
Vividly capturing the moment when tensions boiled over and the city erupted into some of the worst violence in its history, Zoot Suit Riots features evocative archival footage and interviews with a wide variety of eyewitnesses and historians.
The mood in wartime Los Angeles was one of tension and suspicion. Less than a century before, Los Angeles had been part of Mexico but by 1942, Mexican Americans were seen as racially inferior and vulnerable to manipulation by enemy agents. At the same time, Mexican American youth were rebelling against the culture of the tight-knit barrios of their parents. They punctuated their speech with jazz phrases like “hip” and “cool” and took fashion cues from African Americans, favoring the zoot suit’s exaggerated baggy pants and long jackets. Shocked by their outrageous clothes and cocky attitudes, their parents feared they were becoming pachucos or punks.
On August 1, 1942, 19-year-old Hank Leyvas and a group of his friends from L.A.’s 38th Street crashed a party near a swimming hole dubbed the “Sleepy Lagoon.” Claiming the partygoers had beaten him and his girlfriend earlier, Leyvas was determined to get revenge. A brawl ensued. After Leyvas and his friends left the party, neighbors found Jose Diaz badly beaten and stabbed. His subsequent death was a call to action for the city’s police, for whom Mexican American youth crime had been a growing concern.
Within 48 hours, a police dragnet snagged 600 young Mexican Americans; Leyvas and 21 others were indicted for Diaz’s murder. When the Sleepy Lagoon trial began in October 1942, it was the largest mass trial in California history. Judge Charles Fricke presided over the case. Overruling objections from the defense, he sat all the defendants together, isolated from their lawyers, and refused to permit them to clean up or change their clothes for the trial.
Seventeen defendants were found guilty. Leyvas was sentenced to life in San Quentin prison. Believing the boys had been railroaded, a group of intellectuals and Hollywood celebrities — Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth among them — lent their names to the Sleepy Lagoon Defense Committee.
The Sleepy Lagoon Defense Committee successfully appealed their case, claiming that they had been denied a fair trial. The 38th Street boys were released in October 1944 after serving two years in prison. Although the boys were not cleared of the murder charge, the LA authorities decided not to re-try the case.
Decades later, Lorena Encinas, who had been at Sleepy Lagoon, revealed a long-held secret to her children. Her brother Louie and his friends had attacked Jose Diaz and left him to die before Hank and his group even arrived at the party.
Hank Leyvas died in an East L.A. bar in 1971.