History
The riots began in Los Angeles, amidst a period of rising tensions between white American servicemen stationed in southern California and Los Angeles' Mexican-American community. Although Mexican-American men were overrepresented in the military, many white servicemen resented seeing so many Latinos socializing in clothing many considered unpatriotic and extravagant in wartime.
Read more about this topic: Zoot Suit Riots
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“If man is reduced to being nothing but a character in history, he has no other choice but to subside into the sound and fury of a completely irrational history or to endow history with the form of human reason.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“It gives me the greatest pleasure to say, as I do from the bottom of my heart, that never in the history of the country, in any crisis and under any conditions, have our Jewish fellow citizens failed to live up to the highest standards of citizenship and patriotism.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)