Zoot Suit Manhood / State Involvement in Lynching

Topic 1: Zoot Suit Manhood
Research Statement:
In the summer of 1943, a group of American sailors stationed near Los Angeles descended upon the Carmen Theater looking for blood. They began to bludgeon and beat a group of 12-13 year old boys and the adults who tried to protect them, tearing off the boys clothes to light a bonfire. Police stood by to watch as the sailors tore off the boys' clothes to light a bonfire. The only apparent crime: the boys were Mexican American "zooters," young men with a penchant for extravagant and easily-recognizable zoot suits. Over the course of the next few weeks, the attacks would spread across the nation as angry U.S. servicemen assaulted young Mexican Americans in Chicago, New York City, and Philadelphia. Conventional narratives of the Zoot Suit Riot -- or the "Zoot Suit War," to take the term popular in newspapers of the day -- stress that the servicemen felt that the Mexican Americans' clothing, at a time when Americans were being asked to ration textiles, was overtly unpatriotic or subversive. Thus the focus of most attacks was to burn and often urinate on the zoot suits rather than abuse the men wearing them.
I want to explore, however, how the violence could have emerged from varying definitions of American Manhood, to find out if the pachuco arrogance and flamboyance could have sparked as much violence. If one sees the attacks as a form of public humiliation against the Mexican American youths, then the violence can instead be seen as punishment for insufficient manhood in the eyes of servicemen who idealized austerity and obedience. This means I'll need to source explore the origins of pachuco culture on the west coast and how it spread throughout the nation, and compare that culture with what white servicemen may have expected or desired in American men.
Current sources:

• Pagan, E.O., "Los Angeles Geopolitics and the Zoot Suit Riots, 1943" Social Science History vol 24, num 1, (Spring 2000) 223-256.
• Peiss, Kathy Lee, Zoot Suit: The Enigmatic Career of an Extreme Style, (2011).
• "Zoot Suit Riots" PBS videorecording, (2007). at the media/microtext desk

Wishlist:

• Letters from soldiers/interviews about what it means to be an American or a man in America
• Police transcripts during the riot explaining why only Mexican-Americans were imprisoned
• Diary/letters from pachucos about how they fit -- or didn't -- into their dual cultures
• Demographic information on the U.S. army--how many were Mexican American? Did white soldiers know Mexican soldiers.

Topic 2: State Involvement in Lynching
Research Statement:
The typical narrative of a lynching in the south is simple: a crowd of whites, angry at a committed or perceived crime, declares a black member or family of their community guilty. They proceed to kidnap and often beat the victim before publicly hanging them in a spectacle often attended by the an entire town, in which it was not rare for people to claim body parts as souvenirs or write about the murder as a celebration. Where, I ask, are law enforcement officials involved in this process? Why were mobs allows to take the law into their own hands with no repercussion, ignoring any kind of pretense of trial-by-jury or legal procedure whatsoever? Were government officials everywhere complicit in this kind of repeated structural violence, or did some attempt to stop the lynchings?
Current Sources:

• Thurston, Robert W., Lynching: American Mob Murder in Global Perspective, (2011).
• Rushdy, Ashraf H.A., American Lynching, (2012).
• Kato, Daniel, Liberalizing Lynching (2016).

Wish List:

• Statements from white mobs arguing the efficacy and moral justification of lynching
• Any law enforcement documents about the murders available
• Newspapers supporting and attacking mob violence