The Sleepy Lagoon Murder and the "Zoot Suit Riots"

José Gallardo Díaz

On this day in 1942, a man by the name of José Gallardo Díaz was found unconscious by the Sleepy Lagoon in Commerce, California. The lagoon was a reservoir beside the Los Angeles River popular with Mexican-Americans. After Díaz passed away at the Los Angeles County General Hospital, without ever regaining consciousness, it was determined that he had been intoxicated and suffered from blunt head trauma. Although a medical examiner stated that his injuries were consistent with being hit by a car, police decided that Díaz had been beaten. Two days after Díaz was found, police arrested 24 men, all of Mexican descent, for conspiring to beat him to death. The media claimed that they were all members of the "38th Street gang". The media also began calling for police to take action against so-called "zoot suiters". As a result, on August 10 police arrested 600 Latinos and charged them with suspicion of assault, armed robbery, and related offenses.

Of the 24 men arrested for the murder of José Gallardo Díaz, 17 went to trial. The defendants were not allowed to communicate with their attorneys and were made to wear their "zoot suits" during the entire proceedings at the request of the district attorney. The D.A. stated that the jury should see them in the suits as they were "obviously only worn by hoodlums." E. Duran Ayres, chief of the Foreign Relations Bureau of the Los Angeles sheriff's office, testified as an expert witness that Mexicans as a community had a "blood-thirst" and a "biological predisposition" to crime and killing, citing the culture of human sacrifice practiced by their Aztec ancestors.

The Sleepy Lagoon Defense Committee was formed to support the defendants. Members included prominent civil rights activists, such as Josefina Fierro de Bright, and prominent Hollywood actors, such as Orson Welles. The group was labeled a communist front by the California Joint Fact-Finding Committee on Un-European American Activities and members were investigated by the state anti-Communist Tenney Committee.

After the conviction and sentencing of 12 of the defendants to San Quentin prison, the police, press, and city officials continued to fan the flames of hostility between Caucasians and Hispanics. It was rumored that a group of Navy Sailors had been attacked by a group of Mexicans wearing Zoot Suits. 50 sailors retaliated for the alleged attack by swarming the streets and beating up anyone wearing a Zoot Suit. In June of 1943, hundreds of sailors joined in on the "Zoot Suit Riots". After The Los Angeles Examiner reported that Mexicans would be out to retaliate, the Los Angeles City Council passed an ordinance that made it a misdemeanor to wear a Zoot Suit. Finally, on June 8, 1943, military commanders ordered all military personnel to be restricted to their bases and the riots ended.

In 1944, the state Court of Appeals unanimously overturned the conviction of the 12 defendants. The court declared that there was not enough evidence to sustain a guilty verdict and criticized the trial judge for his bias and mishandling of the case.

Events surrounding the case inspired the 1979 play Zoot Suit and 1981 film adaptation, starring Daniel Valdez and Edward James Olmos, both reprising their roles from the stage version. The case plays a major role in The Big Nowhere by James Ellroy.

Related Reading:

75 years ago, Zoot Suit Riots marked a dark period in Southern California history


Mapping L.A.'s Zoot Suit Riots


‘Zoot Suit,’ a Pioneering Chicano Play, Comes Full Circle