Patriots With Clubs - June 3, 1943

On June 3, 1943, fifty U.S. Navy sailors walked out of a Los Angeles armory with clubs and spent the night dragging Mexican-American teenagers from movie theaters, and the police arrested the victims. What followed was eight days of organized mob violence against American citizens, with the full permission structure of the press, law enforcement, and military command already in place. The Zoot Suit Riots are not a story about a riot. They are a story about how institutions build the permission for violence before anyone throws a punch.