The Syrian of Sleepy Lagoon: Ethnic Coalitions and Archival Silence

Abstract

This article revisits the infamous Sleepy Lagoon murder case of 1942 to suggest a different path of interpretation of the trial’s significance for American ethnic studies. I focus on George Shibley, the thirty-two-year-old Syrian American defense attorney in the case, in order to pose a set of theoretical questions around interethnic solidarity and Arab American activism in Southern California. I argue that Shibley’s defense of six of the Mexican American defendants, and his repeated objections to the court on issues related to their right to counsel, arose from his understanding of ethnic stereotyping facing the Mexican-descended population in the US, as well as from his grasp of the lines of solidarity across the Latino and Syro-Lebanese communities in Southern California and throughout the Americas. Based on the records of the Sleepy Lagoon Defense Committee (and the silences contained therein), oral histories, and Arab American archival material, the article asks: What might centering an Arab in the history of the Sleepy Lagoon case do for our understanding of the history of California coalitions and for a longue durée approach to the synergies between Middle Eastern American and Latino activist projects?