In the 1930s and 40s, zoot suits were the hottest trend for young Filipino, Mexican, and African American men like Malcolm X. An emblem of swag, of pride, of defiance. What White servicemen hated. Their mass attack on zoot suiters began #OTD 80 years ago in Los Angeles. A 🧵1/
The zoot suit style began at the tail end of the Harlem Renaissance in 1930s. Young men flocked to urban dance halls to socialize and dance. As a compliment to their moves, dancers started wearing zoot suits. Wide pants. Long coats. Wide-brimmed hat. And watch chain. 2/
Zoot suits grew in popularity, especially with young Black, Filipino, and Mexican American men residing in coastal cities. A young Malcolm X donned “sky-blue pants thirty inches in the knee” in Boston. Cesar Chavez was “challenging cops” looking “sharp and neat” in Delano, CA. 3/
Their parents felt differently. And White Americans too. To them, zoot suits were unrespectable, symbolized gang activity, and threatened social order. Sound familiar? Many White Americans found zoot suits unpatriotic since they required a lot of fabric needed for WWII. 4/
In Los Angeles, street fights often broke out between the predominantly White groups of Navy servicemen and Mexican American zoot suiters. On May 30, 1943, one of these conflicts began, leaving one of the White servicemen with serious injuries. 5/
Four days later, on June 3, White servicemen retaliated by beating and stripping any zoot suiter they saw. Racist cops watched. Racist reporters celebrated. Newspapers called the beaten men “zoot-suit hoodlums” and “organized bands of marauders, prowling the street at night.” 6/
The so-called "Zoot Suit Riots" lasted five days. Mexican, Black, and Filipino youth were targeted even when not wearing zoot suits. The violence only ended on June 8, 1943 because servicemen were barred from leaving their barracks. The next day, Los Angeles banned zoot suits. 7/
Some White men wore zoot suits in Los Angeles. But they were not usually attacked; exposing the lie that White servicemen were acting on patriotism. It was never about the suit. Or the fabric. It was a racist attack on the defiant swag of young men of color. 8/
Fashion as resistance did not end with the zoot suits. In the 1960s, Asian, Latinx, and Black revolutionaries donned berets, what Huey P. Newton called the “international hat for the revolutionary.” Dashikis became a mark of racial pride among African Americans in the 1970s. 9/
Of course, by the 1990s, our baggy jeans sagged. Our Tims and Air Force 1s were fresh. Our dangling chains shined like our pride, like our defiant smiles. When they saw us coming, White Americans and elites of color called us menaces to society, just as they did zoot suiters. 10/
When Trayvon Martin was murdered, Geraldo Rivera said, "I think the hoodie is as much responsible for Trayvon Martin‘s death as much as George Zimmerman was." Clothing used to cover up racist terror against a young male of color. Like the zoot suit eighty years ago. 11/11
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If the SCOTUS refuses to disqualify Donald Trump from running for POTUS after leading an insurrection on January 6, 2021, then it will be the latest indication that the Confederates lost the military battles but won the legal war. 1/4
The 14th Amendment, adopted in 1868, disqualifies from holding office former government officials who engaged in an insurrection against the U.S. 2/4
But as a neo-Confederate declared around that time during the war against Reconstruction, the 14th and 15th Amendments “may stand forever; but we intend. . .to make them dead letters.” 3/4
The 13th Amendment allowed slavery to continue "as a punishment for crime." #OTD in 1913, prison officers forced 12 Black men into a tiny cell for not picking cotton fast enough on a state-run prison plantation in Richmond, Texas. Eight died because they couldn't breathe. A 🧵1/
Since the 13th Amendment allowed slavery “whereof the party shall have been duly convicted,” prison farms became the new plantations to violently exploit Black labor. In 1910, almost 100% of the population on these Texas plantations were Black when 17.7% of Texans were Black. 2/
Prison plantations were a lucrative state-owned and operated business. By 1910, the majority of profits generated by the Texas prison system were from these plantations. However, they came under fire from reformers who found higher levels of abuse compared to other prisons. 3/
The racist violence of the past is ever present in the racial makeup of numerous towns across the US. On this day in 1903, after failing to lynch a Black man, a racist White mob forced the Black residents to flee Whitesboro, Texas. Today this town is less than 1% Black. A 🧵 1/
The history of many US towns is the history of the violent expulsion of Native peoples and later Black residents. Whitesboro is named after Ambrose White who fought in the Black Hawk War in 1832, when Sauk, Fox, and Kickapoo people crossed into Illinois to reclaim their land. 2/
Between 1882 and 1942, around 700 people were lynched in Texas. In 1901, someone accused Abe Wilder of assaulting a White woman in Whitesboro. Racist White terrorists kidnapped Wilber. Then, a racist mob of 1,500 White people watched Wilder be tortured and set on fire. 3/
The litigants, who have falsely framed #affirmativeaction as anti-Asian before the Supreme Court, have been silent about—or supportive of—a real anti-Asian threat in the United States: laws prohibiting Asian nationals from owning U.S. land. 1/
Nearly half of U.S. states—24 to be exact—have passed or proposed bills that would bar people of several nationalities, particularly Chinese people, from purchasing land. Some laws apply only to land near certain military installations; others ban purchases outright. 2/
The DOJ recently blocked Florida's SB-264, which would've gone into effect on July 1. The bill would restrict nationals from several "foreign countries of concern" from purchasing land. But the harshest restrictions were placed on Chinese nationals. 3/
#OTD in 1898, the US launched its invasion of Puerto Rico as part of the Spanish-American War. Ostensibly begun to help the Puerto Rican people throw off Spanish colonialism, the United States replaced Spain as colonizers. Puerto Rico remains a U.S. colony 125 years later. A 🧵1/
The Spanish-American War was an outgrowth of Cuba's war of independence against Spanish rule. U.S. economic interests, as well as "yellow journalism" that inflamed public sentiment toward Spain's wartime conduct, compelled the US to declare war on Spain on April 25, 1898. 2/
Even before the war, U.S. imperialists had their eyes set on Puerto Rico. As US Secretary of State James Blaine wrote in 1891, "There are only three places that are of value enough to be taken, that are not continental. One is Hawaii and the others are Cuba and Porto Rico.” 3/
Enslavers and their historians argued for decades that enslaved Black people benefited from American slavery, were civilized by American enslavers, were better off than peasants in Europe and Africa. All to defend slavery from abolitionists.
In the early U.S., British abolitionists pointed out the hypocrisy of Americans declaring their nation the land of the free while enslaving people. This theory of slavery as (partially or totally) good for Black people dates back to a defense of the U.S. from these critiques. 2/
Philadelphia Federalist Robert Walsh published AN APPEAL FROM THE JUDGMENTS OF GREAT BRITAIN RESPECTING THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA in 1819. “Your work will furnish the 1st volume of every future American history,” Thomas Jefferson accurately predicted in his positive review. 3/