
Cartoon: A troubling moment in “Mary Worth’s Family,” June 1, 1943. Credit: Los Angeles Times
June 1, 1943: It is impossible to accurately determine, so long after the fact, why a May 31, 1943, brawl between zoot-suiters and sailors wasn’t covered in The Times. But that’s only one mystery. The more immediate question is: who was Joe Dacy Coleman?
To recap: I decided to take a look at the historical background of the Zoot Suit Riots after seeing “Zoot Suit” in the Los Angeles Conservancy’s Last Remaining Seats series.
In Part 1, we saw that The Times initially treated the zoot suit as a youthful fad, but the attitude changed once zoot suits were outlawed by the War Production Board to conserve fabric.
In Part 2, Times columnist Timothy Turner provided some more sympathetic insight (zoot-suiters aren’t all criminals and delinquents) that was a surprising counterpoint to the mainstream opinion.
In Part 3, we looked at the events leading up to the Zoot Suit Riots of June 1943.
In Part 4, we found a “zoot zuit orgy” and other news accounts in The Times in early June 1943, until we hit a wall with Joe Dacy Coleman, which is where we pick up now.













For years, 743 S. Spring was the home of Levy’s Cafe, but sometime in the early 1920s the address became Hoffman’s. It’s not clear from The Times’ clips as to what occurred. This is what fine dining looked like in downtown Los Angeles c. 1921. This postcard has been listed on EBay.
The Associated Press has filed a story on the Nixon Library and Museum’s release of more Nixon recordings. Of course, that’s not good enough for the Daily Mirror, so we tracked them down ourselves.
July 22, 1957


e’re celebrating our 39th day at the L.A. Daily Mirror by taking time to thank the readers for their patience as we unpack boxes and get accustomed to the new place.






