By the ’40s, the suits were worn by minority men in working-class neighborhoods throughout the country. Though the zoot suit would be donned by the likes of Dizzy Gillespie and Louis Armstrong ...

For ten straight nights, American sailors armed with make-shift weapons cruised Mexican American neighborhoods in search of "zoot-suiters" — hip, young Mexican teens dressed in baggy pants and ...

Between the military men and the young women stood a group of young men in zoot suits. As the two groups passed each other, Sailor Joe Dacy Coleman, fearing he was about to be attacked ...