3 Button Zoot Suit Riots

The 3 Button Zoot Suit Riots were a series of riot that erupts in California, Los Angeles throughout World War II, among sailors and soldiers stationed in the urban and Hispanic youths, who were identifiable by the zoot suits they favored. Whereas Mexican Americans were mostly trodden, African American as well as Filipino American youth were also targeted.

The 3 Button Zoot Suit riots began in Los Angeles, amidst a age of rising tension among American servicemen stationed in Los Angeles' Chicano community and southern California. Many of the tensions among the Chicano society and the sailors exists because the servicemen walks through a Chicano locality on the way back to their quarters after nights of drinking. The discrimination against the Chicano marginal society was compounded by robbery and fights through these drunken relations. In July 1942, a set of Hispanic youth fight back against police who attempts to break up a simple street corner betting game. In October 1942, more than 600 Chicano youth were under arrest, and dozens charged, in the murder of Jose Diaz in a gang brawl among kids from the 38th Street gang as well as Downey Neighborhoods gang near a lake on the Williams Ranch called the Sleepy Lagoon. This lead to one of the largest courtyard mass trials in California's times past whose conviction were later upturned.