SOURCE: "Zoot Suit: From the Barrio to Broadway," in Ideologies and Literature, Vol. 3, No. 15, January-March, 1981, pp. 124-33.

Davis is an American critic with a special interest in the theater. In the following essay, he and Diamond trace the evolution of Zoot Suit from its inception to Broadway and examine the reasons for its failure.

Zoot Suit, by Luis Valdez, was the first Chicano play on Broadway. Valdez chose as his subject an actual event—the Sleepy Lagoon Murder case. On August 2, 1942, José Díaz was found dead in a dirt road near Los Angeles. There were no witnesses and no murder weapon, but twenty-four Chicanos were indicated for the murder of this one boy. The Hearst papers played it up as a "Mexican crimewave," and in the trial the Chicanos involved were referred to as members of a "gang." The prosecution charged that one of the members of...