Danver Steven L. (Edited). Revolts, Protests, Demonstrations, and Rebellions in American History: An Encyclopedia (ENG)

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Those who remained had to deal with the fragility of their socioeconomic posi-

tion. Children of immigrants reaching adulthood in the 1930s and early 1940s

faced discrimination, police harassment, and racist agitation in the mainstream

media. Many became active in labor union organizing drives and in legal and

political agitation for civil rights. Thesestrugglescreatedthecontextforanew

cultural identity.

Many younger Mexican Americans grew increasingly estranged from a society

that was unwilling or unable to provide them with adequate jobs or education. The

visible symbol of this estrangement was the zoot suit—a highly stylized form of

male dr ess consisting of a b road-brimmed hat, knee-len gth jacket, and draped

trousers tapered at the ankle. Thousands of young Hispanic and black males

adopted this style of dress as a gesture of deﬁance against w ider society and as a

means to assert their own identity and masculinity.

These new cultural identities were forged in a hostile racist setting that sought

to deny Mexicans their identity as Americans. The Zoot Suit Riots of June 1943

were the clearest manifestation of this racism. In response, Mexican Americans

formulated a divided Americanism characterized by adaptability and a cultural

duality that enabled them to synthesize the best characteristics of the two cultures

that deﬁned them.

—Walter F. Bell

Further Reading

Alvarez, Luis. The Power of the Zoot: Youth Culture and Resistance during World War II.

Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008.

Sanchez, George J. Becoming Mexican-American: Ethnicity, Culture, and Identity in

Chicano Los Angeles, 1900–1945. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.

Police Brutality

Police brutality is a term used to describe extralegal physical and psychological

abuse carried out by law enforcement ofﬁcers against individuals for the purposes

of intimidation or gain ing information. It targets no t o nly criminal sus pects, but

also racial and ethnic minorities and groups that exist outside the bounds of con-

ventional society—such as homosexuals and prostitutes. Police brutality in the

United States was widespread in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and was

used to intimidate African Americans and other minorities and reinforce the racial

hierarchy. The civil rights revolution of the 1960s, court rulings expanding the

rights of suspects, more media attention, and better training for police ofﬁcers

have resulted in a decline of the practice, but incidents still occur.

878 Zoot Suit Riots (1942)

In the early 20th century, police often used extralegal beatings to keep members

of minorities in a subordinate place in society’s racial hierarchy. In Los An geles

and other areas in Southern California and the western states, violence by law

enforcement ofﬁcers was directed at Mexican Americans as well as blacks. Brutal-

ity was a source of tensions between the Los Angeles Police Department and the

Mexican American and African American communities. These tensions grew out

of the inherently conservative function of the police to keep order and the percep-

tion by the predominately white ofﬁcers (and wider white society) that racial

minorities were a threat because they were more prone to commit crimes and were

open to appeals from political radicals. Despite a reputation as one of the most cor-

rupt police departments in the country, the L APD had the support of local mer-

chants, manufacturers, and the city’s political establishment, all of whom believed

that they had a “Mexican problem.” When incidents of police misconduct against

minorities occurred, law enforcement generally received the beneﬁt of the doubt.

This reality would inﬂuence police response to the Zoot Suit Riot of June 1943.

Economic and social dislocations brought on by the war effort further height-

ened racial tensions in Los Angeles. Whites feared that African Americans and

Mexican Americans were taking openings in war industries from white workers

and eroding social stability. The rise of the “zoot suit” culture among young blacks

and Hispanic s and worries about increased crime and juvenile delinquency fed

these fears. Both senior and rank-and-ﬁle police viewed zoo t suiters as a threat

to law and order. Conﬂicts between police and the Mexican community intensiﬁed

with the 1942 “Sleepy Lagoon” case in which 17 young Hispanic men were

arrested, tried, and convicted of a gang-related murder of another Mexican

American teenager. Rumors of beatings and evidence tampering by police and

prosecutors further polarized relations between minorities and the authorities.

In the months following the Sleepy Lagoon trial, violence by the LAPD against

blacks and Hispanics intensiﬁed. Between March and the end of May 1943, there

were at least three incidents in which police ﬁred on minority youth and numerous

complaints of police beatings. Moreover, police made little effort to stop white

youths from attacking zoot suiters or contain clashes between members of the

armed forces and Hispanics.

A late May 1943 incident in the Venice area served as a portent for police

behavior in the Zoot Suit Riots. The L APD made virtu ally no effort to stop a

mob of 500 individuals, mostly sailors, from attacking zoot suiters on the Venice

boardwalk. Even t hough white servicemen and civilians initiated the violence,

police blamed the zoot suiters and arrested 11 Hispanic boys.

Police brutality against minorities and its acceptance by w hites reﬂected the

prevailing view in wider society that extralegal violence by law enforce ment was

acceptable to maintain order. When servicemen rioted against zoot suiters in

Zoot Suit Riots (1942) 879

June 1943 and indiscriminately attacked minority youth, police did little to stop

the attacks. The law enforcement ofﬁcers were in sympathy with the sailors and

marines involved.

—Walter F. Bell

Further Reading

Alvarez, Luis. The Power of the Zoot: Youth Culture and Resistance during World War II.

Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008.

Escobar, Edward J. Race, Police, and the Making of a Political Identity: Mexican-

Americans and the Los Angeles Police Department, 1900–1945. Berkeley: U niversity

of California Press, 1999.

Servicemen

The term “servicemen” refers to members of the armed forces. The United States’

entry into Wor ld War II and the ensuing war effort brou ght a massive inﬂux of

soldiers, sa ilors, and marines into Southern California, which became a major

staging area for operations in the Paciﬁc War as well as a manufacturing center.

The large number of military bases in the Los Angeles area meant that there were

large numbers of servicemen in Los Angeles. Tensions between white members of

the armed forces and Mexican American and African American youths were cen-

tral to the Zoot Suit Riots of June 1943.

The conﬂict between servicemen and the “zoot suiters” had cultural, racial, and

gendered roots. The millions of soldiers, sailors, and marines who poured into

Southern California were, in many cases, from small towns in the South, Midwest,

and West, where conservative views on race and culture prevailed, and which pre-

disposed them to hostility toward the Zoot culture popular among minority youths

in Los Angeles. The inherent hostility of white servicemen toward zoot suiters was

also a product of pent-up frustrations of young men who were training to ﬁght a

racial enemy (the Japanese) in the Paciﬁc, yet were stationed or on leave in a city

where a visible group of minority youths were identiﬁed as alien and subversive.

These cultural tensions between servicemen and zoot suiters, although aggra-

vated by wartime conditions, predated the war years. In the middle and late

1930s, when the Zoot culture was emerging, brawls and shouting matches between

white servicemen and zoot suiters occurred frequently. As U.S involvement in the

war deepened, these clashes escalated both in frequency and violence. Already

predisposed to hostilit y toward Hispanic and black youths, white servi cemen

viewed zoot suiters as a threat to the established order. They also viewed zoot

880 Zoot Suit Riots (1942)

suiters, with their ﬂashy clothes, brashness, and ﬂouting of patriotic values, as

challenging traditional white conceptions of masculinity.

Competition for female companionship was a ﬂashpoint. White servicemen

viewed nonconforming Hispanics and blacks as a threat to white women. They

measured their own masculinity by their ability to protect their women and were

viewed any advances by blacks or Hispanics as a challenge that had to be met with

violence. The weeks before the Zoot Suit Riots saw a rising number of complaints

from white sailors concerning insults and threats by Hispanic teenagers t oward

white women. Similarly, z oot suiters resented servicemen seeking the company

of His panic wom en seeing the se advances as challenges to their own dignity and

masculi nity. T he two groups virtually mirrored each other. Each inc ited violence

against the other to assert themselves. Each valued their own racial and gender

identities to the disadvantage of the other.

Tensions were also fueled by geographic proximity. Many of the military bases

in the Los Angeles area—particularly the naval training facilities at C havez

Ravine, the army base at Fort MacArthur, and the por t at Terminal Island—were

located near minority areas. Main thoroughfare s, su ch as Figueroa Boulevard,

leading directly from military bases to downtown Los Angeles, passed through

Hispanic neighborhoods. The Mexican and black areas surrounding downtown

were a meeting ground between young civilians and members of the armed forces.

With the high level of animosity between the two groups, violence was inevitable.

The Zoot Suit Riots of June 3 to 10, 1943, reﬂected the animosity servicemen

felt toward the zoot suiters. For a week, packs of soldiers, sailors, and marines tar-

geted every Mexican American area in Los Angeles hunting young Hispanics.

Zoot suiters were beaten, stripped of their clothes, and humiliated in front of

crowds of onlookers. White service men were less interested in killing or injuring

their adversaries (there were no deaths and very little property damage) than

humiliating them. The actions by white servicemen reﬂected their feelings that

they were defending their own masculinity and patriotic values against threats

and insults from an alien and subversive culture. Regardless of who was to blame

for initiating the violence, the ultimate cause was the clash of gender, racial, and

cultural identities in a highly charged wartime setting.

—Walter F. Bell

Further Reading

Alvarez, Luis. The Power of the Zoot: Youth Culture and Resistance during World War II.

Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008.

Pagan, Eduardo Obregon. “Los Angeles Geopolitics and the Zoot Suit Riot 1943.” Social

Science History 24, no. 1 (Spring 2000): 223–256.

Zoot Suit Riots (1942) 881

Battle of Athens (1946)

Athens, Tennessee, is the county seat of McMinn County in the eastern part of the

state. It lies between the larger metropolitan areas of Knoxville and Chattanooga.

In the 1940s, Athens, nicknamed “the Friendly City,” had a population of approx-

imately 11,000. The Battle of Athens, also known as the McMinn County War,

was an armed uprising against the political machine that controlled McMinn

County in August 1946. Returning veterans from World War II were instrumental

in leading the uprising against the m achine of state senator Paul Cantrell and

McMinn County sheriff Pat Mansﬁeld.

Paul Cantrell was from a wealthy family in Etowah, another small town in

McMinn County. He had begun his political career in 1936 when he was elected

as sheriff in McMinn County. With the help of E. H. “Boss” Crump, the former

mayor of Memphis who controlled a statewide political machine, Cantrell began

developing a Democratic Party machine to control politics in McMinn County.

During the decade that Cantrell was in power, there were repeated charges that

elections were rigged, ballots were destroyed, an d ballot boxes were stuffed or

completely replaced with those containing the “proper” votes. In addition,

sheriff ’s deputies regularly arrested people for little apparent reason, just so the

sheriff’s ofﬁce could collect the fees that state law allowed for each person incar-

cerated. Cantrell was reelected to the sheriff’s post in 1938 and 1940. In 1942, he

was elected to the state senate, and his chief deputy, Pat Mansﬁeld, became sheriff

of McMinn County. Complaints had been ﬁled with the federal Department of

Justice about political corruption in McMinn County, and while investigations

had been conducted, no corrective action was ever taken.

In the election in August 1946, Mansﬁeld and Cantrell sought to switch jobs.

Cantrell want ed to return to the county sheriff’s position, and with his backing,

Mansﬁeld was running to replace him in the state senate. Many returning veterans,

however, were impatient with the lack of any serious efforts to address the issue of

corruption in the county government. About 3,000 residents of McMinn County had

served in the military during the war. Trouble had begun during the war between

soldiers and the local political machine, when servicemen home on leave alleged

they were being harassed by the sheriff’s department. In the 1946 election, the vet-

erans formed an independent group to run a slate of candidates on what they called

the GI Nonpartisan Ticket. Five candidates, including two Republicans, were

883

running for various ofﬁces, but most attention was focused on one race—Knox

Henry versus Cantrell for the county sheriff’s position. Henry was a 34-year-old

Army Air Corps veteran who was a local schoolteacher. Backers of the GI Nonpar-

tisan Ticket promised to ensure that a fair election and a fair count of the votes

would take place.

On the day of the county general election, Mansﬁeld had ﬂooded the county

with scores of specially commissioned deputies, most hired from outside the

county and some from out of state. Poll watchers from the GI Nonpartisan Ticket

were harassed by county deputies, some were beaten, and others were arrested.

When a black farmer who was also a World War II veteran attempted to vote in

one of the county’s precincts, a deputy argued with him, told him he could not

vote, and ﬁnally shot the man. When news of such tactics spread among the people

in the community, mobs began to attack some of the deputies and by the middle of

the afternoon, several deputies had been beaten and forced to leave town.

The polls closed at 4:00 p.m., and the votes were to be counted at the ofﬁces of

the Athens Water Company. Inside the ofﬁces, sheriff ’s deputies were trying to

restrai n some of the GI Nonpartisan Ticket poll watchers and basically sought to

hold these men as hostages, to prevent them from reporting how the vote was being

tabulated. Two of these men ﬁnally dove through a plate glass window to escape

and tell others what was happening with the ballot boxes. Soon, violence erupted

outside the water company ofﬁces. Sheriff Mansﬁeld and two carloads of deputies

arrived and took the ballot boxes to the county jail, claiming that this would pro-

vide the security for a safe and careful count of the vote. Many of the o pponents

of the machine, however, believed this was simply a pretext that would allow the

machine operatives to manipulate the vote count as they had done in many pre-

vious elections. Mansﬁeld, Cantrell, and state representative George Woods, who

were all members of the county electoral commission, were present at the jail so

they could certify the election results when the counting was completed.

By nightfall, a large mob of veterans and other county residents had gathered

outside th e jail. Many had brought hunting riﬂes and shotguns from home, and

some weapons were also taken from the local state militia armory. They threatened

to ﬁre on the deputies inside the jail if the ballot boxes were not returned. When

someone inside the jail ﬁred a shot, a volley of ﬁre erupted from the crowd outside.

There was a conside rable amount of gunﬁre from both sides in a standoff that

lasted for about six hours. A few people were wounded, but there were no fatal-

ities. At one point, an ambulance pulled up to the jail; the mob, believing it was

there to evacuate wounded people, did not interfere. When the ambulance left,

however, it carried Cantrell and Mansﬁeld to safety. About dawn of the next morn-

ing, some of the mob blew off the front entrance of the jail with dynamite, and the

deputies inside agreed to surrender, coming out with their hands in the air. Fearing

884 Battle of Athens (1946)

that the deputi es might be physically harmed by the mobs outside, leaders of the

uprising locked the deputies in the jail cells, for their own protection.

When the ballot boxes were retrieved and the votes counted, it was announced that

the entire slate of the GI Nonpartisan Party’s candidates had been elected. Sheriff

Mansﬁeld and State Senator Cantrell had gone into hiding. Since the ofﬁcial govern-

mental structure of the county had virtually disintegrated, a mass meeting was held

the following day at which a local minister and two area businessmen were chosen

to serve as an interim county government until the regularly elected ofﬁcials took

ofﬁce. The slate of ofﬁcials elected in McMinn County promised reforms, and in

1947, the county adopted a county commission form of government, where commis-

sioners are elected who in turn hire a professional manager to run the day-to-day

operations of the county. Mansﬁeld gave up politics and returned to Georgia, his

nati ve state. Cantrell ev entually returned to pri vate business ventures in Etowah.

The Battle of Athens gained nationwide notoriety, with many observers decry-

ing the violence and the resort to “vigilante” tactics. Some commentators, how-

ever, did note tha t the county residents had exhausted virt ually a l l legal avenues

of dealing with the corrupt machine. Eleanor Roosevelt, the widow of President

Franklin D. Roosevelt, referred to the uprising in h er “My Day” column twice in

the next few weeks. The Battle of Athens has become a cause ce

bre among sup-

porters of the right to bear arms, who often cite it as evidence of why the citizens’

right to own ﬁrearms must be protected—because it might be necessary for the

people to take up arms against a corrupt government.

—Mark S. Joy

See also all entries under Stamp Act Protests (1765); Boston Massacre (1770); Regulator

Movement (1771); Pine Tree Riot (1772); Boston Tea Party (1773); Shays’ Rebellion

(1787); Whiskey Rebellion (1794); B rooks- Baxter War (1874); Green Corn Rebellion

(1917); Sagebrush Rebellion (1979–1981); World Trade Organization Protests (1999);

Day without an Immigra nt (2006).

Further Reading

Byrum, C. Stephen. The Battle of Athens. Chattanooga, TN: Paidia Productions, 1987.

Gunther, John. Inside U.S.A. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1947.

Perry, Jennings. “Rebellion in Tennessee.” Nation 163, no. 5 (August 10, 1946): 147.

Seiber, Lones. “The Battle of Athens.” American Heritage 36, no. 2 (February–

March 1985): 72–79.

“Tennessee: Battle of the Ballots.” Time, August 12, 1946.

Battle of Athens (1946) 885

Mansfield, Pat (dates unknown)

The sheriff of McMinn County who was ousted by the Battle of Athens was Pat

Mansﬁeld, a pa rt of State Senator Paul Cantrell’s Democratic county political

machine. Mansﬁeld, who was described as a large, burly man, had previously been

a locomotive engineer on the Louisville and Nashville Railroad. He was not from

the McMinn County area and spent most of his life in Georgia. Paul Cantrell began

his political career by becoming sheriff of McMinn County in 1936. Mansﬁeld

worked for him as a deputy sheriff, eventually becoming the chief deputy. After

Cantrell was elected to the state senate in 1942, Mansﬁeld was elected county

sheriff in his place.

With the support of Cantrell’s political machine, and more indirect support

from the machine of E. H. Crump that had some inﬂuence throughout Tennessee,

Mansﬁeld ruled McMinn County with ruthless efﬁciency. There were charges of

widespread voter fraud, and Mansﬁeld and his deputies proﬁted from Tennessee

laws that allowed the sheriff to collect a fee for every person arrested and incarcer-

ated. There were repeated charges that local citizens and tourists were routinely

arrested for speeding, drunken driving, or public drunkenness, with no regard to

their g uilt or innocence, so that Mansﬁeld and his deputies could collect the fees

involved. Sometimes, more than 100 people were arrested in one weekend. It

was also alleged that Mansﬁeld received kickbacks or protection money from

makers of illegal liquor, and those who ran bars, road houses, and houses of pros-

titution. One estimate suggested that Mansﬁeld reaped more than $100,000 from

these illicit sources during the four years he held the sheriff’s ofﬁce.

In 1946, Mansﬁeld and Cantrell sought to switch positions—Cantrell wanted to

return to the county’s sheriff’s post, and Mansﬁeld was running to take Cantrell’s

seat in the state senate. When the GI Nonpartisan Ticket promised to watch the

polls carefully to make sure the vote was honestly counted, Mansﬁeld hired scores

of extra deputies from outside the county and from outside the state to intimidate

both voters and poll watchers. Mansﬁeld charged that the veterans were fomenting

trouble, and warned that he would have several hundred deputies patrolling the

county on Election Day. When the veterans and others concerned with the voting

irregularities besieged the county jail, Mansﬁeld and Cantrell both ﬂed the county,

and their political machine was largely destroyed. Mansﬁeld returned brieﬂy to

McMin n County to resign his pos ition as a member of the county electoral com-

mission, his last ofﬁcial connection to the county’s politics. He also telegraphed

Tennessee governor Jim N ance McCord with his r esignati on a s sheriff, and sug-

gested that Knox Henry, who had been elected to succeed him, be appointed to ﬁll

out the last few weeks of his term. Mansﬁeld went to live for a time with relatives

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