Monica L. Miller

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186 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Aug 2026 last heard 2 Aug

Monica L. Miller’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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No One Saw It Coming · The suit that sparked a riot · 2 Aug 2026 podcast

But there's a way that clothing maps onto these transitions in status.

At that time, in the early part of the 19th century, when Black people were seen to be dressed above their station, they were also sometimes attacked and the clothes ripped off their backs.

At that time, the suit was small.

It gets bigger as we move toward the 20th century.

What they are looking for is like a zoot suit of the highest quality, right?

And for them, what that would mean is probably a bespoke garment that was striped.

All of the seams and stripes were lining up, right?

That it hadn't been modified before.

and re-tailored too many times for somebody else, right?

So there are a lot of, I say, vintage dealers that sell zoot suits or suits that are from that time period that might be considered zoot suits, but they're often been really overly modified.

So you're looking for one of these pristine suits that's different.

They're hard to find because I think tailoring is a real practice.

in communities of color, right?

So a zoot suit, I'm sure if you had a zoot suit in 1943 and it went out of style by 1953, you had that thing tailored, right?

Which means it was no longer a zoot, right?

So finding a zoot that's still in its zoot state, right?

That hasn't been tailored too much isn't easy.

I want people when they look at a zoot suit to think about the people who wore them and why they wore them, right?

Some of them were wearing them as expressions of identity.

Some of them are wearing them to dance.

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