ETST 001 Lecture Notes - Lecture 13: Zoot Suit, Lindy Hop, Hadda Brooks
6 Mar 2017
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Race and cultural politics in wartime and postwar los angeles. Perhaps the symmetrical frenzy if the lindy hop conceals clues to great potential power -- Blacks called each other man" in the zoot suit where the whites called them boy". The savoy ballroom, america"s first integrated dance floor. These dance halls represent inclusion because people were tired of exclusion. In the late 1930s, the dance became popular among young whites and was renamed the jitterbug. Cops said things such as they"re selling drugs, they said anything in their power to keep blacks and whites separated. Zoot suited black hipsters and hustlers were race rebels" who challenged middle class ethics and expectations refusing to be good proletarians. " . The social context in which [the zoot suit] was created and worn rendered it s subversive refusal to be subservient. Blacks were reclaiming their bodies and they were refusing their poorly paid unsatisfying jobs.
