Los Angeles Riots

The origin of Los Angeles as a New World settlement was ethnic and racist in conception and execution due to the fact that the Spanish Empire, under the direction of explorers commissioned by Spain and abetted by the Roman Catholic Church, formally claimed California as Spanish territory in the 18th century, in the process subduing the indigenous population with varying degrees of force. That distant fact is relevant to the present research because it set a tone that, as an abundance of evidence demonstrates, has not changed appreciably over the centuries.

The autobiography of a Mexican-American, Dionicio Morales, born in this country to a migrant farm worker in the early 20th century, vividly illustrates the legacy of unequal social standing between ethnic groups in Los Angeles. As a boy, Morales had a growing consciousness of the "silent rules about being an American that had nothing to do with being born in this country" (Morales 56). He was ignored by some teachers, despised by others, but in 1937, he was class valedictorian. When he was ejected from a movie house for sitting in the Anglo section (126-7), the "them" against "us" mentality transformed his life toward social activism. An organized attempt to desegregate the El Rancho Theatre ended in success, and Morales became involved as a Dept. of Labor employee in improving working conditions for braceros, then in attempting to redress conditions producing gangs in East Los Angeles.

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cemen and the wearing of zoot suits was banned for 30 days. The police and the Los Angeles press were at pains to stress that the riots were caused by war tensions, even though some press coverage praised the actions of the servicemen (McWilliams 13), but a potmortem report on the riots concluded that racism was an important cause (Cosgrove 71). Indeed, "the actual rioters were in fact white U.S. soldiers and sailors from nearby military bases and white Los Angeles residents who hunted down zoot-suiters and beat and stripped them of their clothing" (Daniels 99). That points up the racial component of the event. Los Angeles neighborhoods after the war developed along ethnic lines, with the city as a whole maintaining a quietus until 1965, when the black suburb Watts erupted during the so-called long, hot summer, in the wake of an arrest of a 21-year-old African American man. When a crowd gathered to taunt the police involved in the arrest, one of them struck an onlooker, leading to charges of police brutality. The incident--complicated by the Vietnam War, rising racial tensions in light of the currency of the civil rights movement, high unemployment among blacks, and overcrowded conditions--led to five days of rioting and

Category: History - L