Where Latino March Toward Justice Began

Its name reflected its ambience, and that made what happened there even stranger.

Today, the words Sleepy Lagoon are a synonym for injustice and racial hatred. But in 1942, all they suggested was a quiet, rural pond.

It also was a swimming hole for young Mexican Americans who weren’t allowed to swim at segregated public pools. At night, it served as a lovers’ paradise, part of a ranch once known as Rancho la Laguna.

A half-century earlier, the area east of Downtown was a duck hunter’s dream, owned by Arcadia Bandini Stearns de Baker, who was a daughter of a family that had been prominent during Mexican rule and, later, successively, wife to two of the richest Americans in the area. Her lawyer and friend, Henry W. O’Melveny, who would later found the city’s biggest law firm, built a clubhouse for his exclusive Laguna Duck Club. The tranquil atmosphere created by the weeping willow trees and tule surrounding the large reservoir between Adamson Avenue and Scott Way, just south of East Slauson Avenue, became known as Sleepy Lagoon.

On Aug. 1, 1942, a party attended by Latino youths was held at the former duck club, by then simply a ranch house. Gate crashers--alleged members of the 38th Street Gang--arrived and fighting quickly broke out. Some cars were overturned and windows smashed. After the melee, 21-year-old Jose Diaz was found beaten to death.

The city’s media went berserk. A newspaper campaign against “juvenile delinquents” demanded that authorities round up the killers. Headlines shouted, “Kid Gloves Off!” The Sheriff’s Department declared war on the gangs.

Within days, police had rounded up 600 youths for questioning; 24 of them ultimately were indicted for murder, setting the stage for the largest mass criminal trial in American history.

Two of the alleged gang members hired their own attorneys and soon were released. During the course of the investigation and trial, the other 22 suspects were held incommunicado; two of them were badly beaten by their police interrogators. All were denied clean clothing, showers and haircuts until late in the trial.

A Los Angeles sheriff’s “expert” testified that people of Mexican descent were biologically predisposed to “a desire to kill or at least draw blood.”

At trial, none of the witnesses ever testified that they saw anyone strike the victim. Some of the defendants couldn’t even be placed at the scene.

The U.S. Office of War Information feared the campaign against the “boy gangs” might be a ploy by the Nazis attempting to cause civil unrest in America. Many of the inflammatory stories came from enemy wartime radio broadcasters such as Tokyo Rose and Axis Sally, reporting, “10,000 Mexicans were rounded up and put in concentration camps in Southern California.”

In January, 1943, after a three-month trial, 12 defendants were convicted of murder. The jury acquitted five others and found the remaining five guilty of assault, but they were released because of time already spent in jail.

Charging that the young men were railroaded on racist grounds, concerned citizens led by activist Alice McGrath organized to fight for their release. Eighteen months later, an appeals court overturned all the convictions. The appellate justices severely reprimanded Judge Charles W. Fricke for displaying prejudice and hostility toward the defendants. The court also criticized the prosecutors, who had improperly pointed out the clothing and haircuts of the defendants as evidence of their guilt.

But by then, the campaign against Latino young people--who were stereotyped as zoot-suited pachucos --had moved to the streets. Over a two-week period, in May and June, 1943, police stood by while several thousand servicemen and civilians wandered the streets, drawing cheers from bystanders as they beat up Latino youths, stripping them of their draped jackets and pegged pants. The “zoot suit hoodlums” were blamed for staying at home and not going off to war. Yet some who wore the unconventional zoot suit actually were GIs who were on leave.

The Los Angeles City Council, shunning any blame or responsibility for what happened, responded to the situation by banning the victims’ zoot suits within the city. Later, the council substituted a motion asking the Police Commission to prepare a report and recommendations.

The report was never presented.

The Sleepy Lagoon slaying, which inspired a critically acclaimed play and film, “Zoot Suit,” was never solved. But its impact extended far beyond the courtroom.

Today, the site of Sleepy Lagoon is a gritty industrial zone, but it is remembered as the symbolic starting point in Latinos’ long march toward equal justice and opportunity in the Southwest.