COMPTONS

When we talk gay Pride and gay history, it sometimes amazes me how it's not mentioned very much about the Compton Cafeteria Riots that happened several years before and most likely led the way for the Stonewall Riots,  and again led by trans women and drag queens. The queens had finally had enough! Almost 58 years ago this coming August, transgender and drag queens and gender- nonconforming customers at Gene Compton's Cafeteria stood up to years of abusive, discriminatory treatment by the San Franisco police. The all-night restaurant in the city's impoverished Tenderloin neighborhood was an unwilling haven for queer residents, and after its management called police to remove a noisy table of diners, patrons frustrated with the constant profiling and harassment, started throwing plates, glasses, trays, silverware and fist at the officers. While police waited for back up, customers tore the cafeteria apart, and the riot spread onto the nearby streets of Turk and Taylor, damaging police cars, smashing windows and burning a newspaper stand to the ground.

Three years before the Stonewall Riots in New York City, which most Americans consider the watershed moment for gay rights, transgender citizens of San Fran took to the streets to demand better treatment and to hold their harassers accountable. Although the conflict at Compton's was mostly ignored by the media, including our own publications run by the gay community, 1966 would prove a major turning point in the battle for transgender civil rights, a year when cultural shifts aligned to begin improving the Trans community's access to healthcare and its relationship with law enforcement. I know some people don't get the destruction of property and such. But when a part of tribe in my opinion is ignored, treated like dirt, can't have rights, and be treated just like everybody else, there comes a point it's time to burn the village to get people to see how far they have pushed us. There comes a breaking point when enough is enough.

Donna Personna was one that was not going to take it anymore, having been at Comptons, and faced discriminations from clubs and bars... and proud to say she is still with us at 78. Donna Personna does not want to be tolerated.  I read in a book, where she said, she is to be loved, adored and respected, and has no patience for anyone's tolerance. She says Fuck that shit...Just gives us our rights. I couldn't agree more.  And her Pride mantra always has been, "It' ain't no party. It's time to act up." We have to remember what happened more then 50 years ago to the transgender, the ones that taught her how to live and fight back if need be. Donna is a huge transgender rights activist these days and a fine artist who focuses in on photography, painting and mixed media. She also co-wrote a play about the Compton Cafeteria Riot and added much content into a documentary about the riot. Since then, she raised San Francisco's first transgender flag at City Hall with Mayor London Breed and in 2019 was the Grand Marshall of the Pride Parade. 

I can't help but when at a Pride think of all the ones involved in all the riots and the activist before us. I still get chills when in New York for Pride and have drinks at the Stonewall. I feel it's only right to take a moment of peace to feel the place and remember what went on in these places. Which is why it's important we keep being seen at these Pride Parades and festivals. We stay in our homes; people will think we don't care about our rights, or we are not good enough for them. Sure, the festivities, frivolity and comradery and the drinks can be fun, but let's also remember and give an ode to the real reason we are there...to celebrate where we came from, and to keep a good, spirited fight going. 

Happy Gay Pride🏳‍🌈

THE GENE COMPTONS RIOT

Historian Susan Stryker made the amazing discovery the way that many of her peers do: by pure accident. She wasn’t looking for it, but she found evidence of a forgotten chapter in the history of LGBT community in America.In 1995, Stryker a transgendered historian, and co-author Jim Van Buskirk were working on Gay by the Bay, their soon-to-be published, best seller capsule history of the San Francisco LGBT movement, when they came across an interesting item in the program for the 1972 Gay Pride march.The article described an August 1966 riot at Gene Compton’s Cafeteria in the Tenderloin, a poor and working-class area of the city where many transgenders and drag queens lived, and still do. The incident started after a rowdy queen refused to leave the popular hangout and management called the police.

The account of the riot from the Pride program reads like a description of a lot of the social unrest of the 1960s: “Gays began breaking out every window in the place, and as they ran outside to escape the breaking glass, the police tried to grab them and throw them into the paddy wagon, but they found this no easy task for gays began hitting them “below the belt” and drag-queens smashing them in the face with their extremely heavy purses. A police car had every window broken, a newspaper shack outside the cafeteria was burned to the ground.” Though many positive changes occurred after the riot, including a better relationship with the local police district and the establishment of social services for the trans community, the incident didn’t give birth to the kind of national mass movement that followed a similar night of rioting in New York’s Greenwich Village after cops raided the Stonewall bar.

Nearly three years after Compton’s, the Stonewall riots were the spark that gave birth to the modern gay liberation struggle. Literally, overnight, thousands of students and others, many from the antiwar and other radical movements, came pouring out of their closets to form the in-your-face organizations that eventually replaced the existing “homophile” groups. “Compton’s happened too early,” says Stryker. “In 1966, things were just starting to bust out all over: The Black Panthers, the anti-war movement, the kids using psychedelics. Three years later, a lot more gay people were waiting for their own moment. Stonewall happened. A lot more people were primed to take advantage of it.”

Word spread about the rebellion in New York. Eventually, the Compton story was forgotten. Inspired by what she read, Stryker went on to make a documentary about the incident at Compton’s.

Co-produced with Victor Silverman and Jack Walsh, it’s appropriately entitled Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton’s Cafeteria. It aired on PBS stations nationally in June 2006. An official San Francisco city plaque was installed in the sidewalk near the site of the riot that same summer.

I'll say one thing...drag queens are not to be trifled with.