In June 1943, these tensions exploded in one of the worst race riots in the city's history. After a Mexican American boy raised his hand in a way that a sailor considered to be "threatening," the man and his friends attacked the boy. This sparked a skirmish in the street, which ended quickly after the initial sailor had his nose broken. That night, hundreds of sailors went into the neighborhood and attacked every Mexican American boy they could find. For the next ten straight days, the Navy sailors went into Chavez Ravine, Downtown LA, and even East Los Angeles, dragging, beating, and stripping naked every Zoot suited boy out in public - some as young as twelve and thirteen years old. The white Los Angeles press cheered on the racist attacks, even printing guides on how to "de-zoot" a zoot-suiter. The LAPD responded by joining the sailors, arresting hundreds of Zoot suiters, both teenaged boys and girls, and charging them with "disturbing the peace." Progressive activists at the time, such as Carey McWilliams, blamed the riots on William Randolph Hearst's "proto-fascist" promotion of "anti-Mexican hysteria" during the Sleepy Lagoon murder trial. Scholars, however, have focused on the complex social matrix operating within Los Angeles at the time, and interpret the riots as an example of the "social cleavages" within the segregation-era U.S.