This is 99% Invisible. I'm Roman Mars. We heard you, the chorus of voices, all asking,

where is Con Law? Where is Elizabeth Joe to guide us through this madness? We need it now more

than ever. Well, here it is. We're bringing the show back with a special extra long episode,

plus we have an announcement about how the series is going to grow and develop from here.

It is very exciting. So let's get into it. Oh my goodness. It is Monday, June 2nd at 10 a.m.

As we record this, what are we going to be talking about today? Well, I thought we'd go back in time, and we would start with zoot suits.

Are you familiar with the zoot suit, Roman? Very familiar. I love a good zoot suit. It's that big suit jacket with wide lapels, huge shoulder pads, high-waisted, baggy pants that tapered toward the bottom.

And if you remember the movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit from the 1980s, the Tune Patrol

Weasels all wore zoot suits, so those were the bad guys.

Look, Valian, we got a reliable tip-off. The rabbit was here and was corrugated by several honors.

And the setting of Roger Rabbit takes us to the right period of time, the 1940s.

Now, after the United States enters World War II in December of 1941, millions of young men

are committed to military service. And on February 19th, 1942, President Roosevelt issued

executive order 9066. And that's the infamous order that placed people of Japanese ancestry,

including U.S. citizens, into internment camps. Now, both of these wartime actions resulted in a huge labor shortage, especially in agriculture,

because so many Japanese Americans had worked on farms.

And one major response the federal government provides is to recruit foreign workers from Mexico.

And in 1942 in August, the United States signed an agreement with Mexico to create the

Mexican Farm Labor Program Agreement. This would formally allow Mexicans to enter the United States

to work on a temporary basis. Now, this arrangement is better known as the Bracero program. Bracero literally means a person who works with their arms, like farmwork.

And the program would eventually bring millions of Mexican nationals to the United States because it was renewed multiple times.

Now, in Los Angeles, this sudden influx of Mexican nationals added to even more problems, and those were the racial

...