Among the contemporaneous news articles surrounding the issue of delinquency and its relation to 1940s Mexican American zoot-suit, or pachuco, culture, this one in the Los Angeles Times, by Gene Sherman, stands out for having been published a day before the start of the so-called Zoot Suit Riots of June 3–8, 1943, and for highlighting “language variance in the home” as “a serious factor of delinquency.” Sherman begins by reminding readers of events that occurred the year prior and the growing problem with wayward youth in the city. His audience would have recalled the tragic events of August 2, 1942, in which a young Mexican American man, José Gallardo Díaz, was killed in an altercation at a party. Consequently, many members of the 38th Street gang were arrested, seventeen of whom were eventually convicted for the murder in January of 1943. After numerous appeals by their families, community members, and civil rights activists who charged that the trial had been racially motivated, they were all acquitted and freed in 1944.