The Compton's Cafeteria riot occurred in August 1966 in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco. The riot was a response to the violent and constant police harassment of trans people, particularly trans women, and drag queens. The incident was one of the first LGBTQ-related riots in United States history, preceding the more famous 1969 Stonewall riots in New York City by three years. It marked the beginning of transgender activism in San Francisco.
The 1960s was a pivotal period for sexual, gender, and ethnic minorities, as social movements championing civil rights and sexual liberation came to fruition. Additionally, the 1950s created the foundation for the trans rights and gay liberation movements with the earlier Homophile movement. Though Stonewall is often heralded as the beginning of the trans rights movement, the Compton's Cafeteria Riots and the homophile movement came first. Social groups helped mobilize and even churches, like Glide Memorial Methodist Church in San Francisco, began reaching out to the transgender community. Nevertheless, many police officers resisted these movements and the increasing visibility of these groups, continuing to harass and abuse transgender people. This simultaneous rise in support for transgender rights on the one side and the unwillingness to accept these new ideas on the other created the strain that fueled the riot at Compton's Cafeteria in the summer of 1966. The incident began when a transgender woman resisted arrest by throwing coffee at a police officer. It was followed by drag queens and transgender women pouring into the streets, fighting back with their high heels and heavy bags.
Background
Increased awareness of transgender identity
The general public was first made aware of transgender identities after the famous medical transition and 1952 sex reassignment surgery of Christine Jorgensen in Denmark. Jorgensen was the first famous and well-known trans woman. In the 1960s following Jorgensen's surgery, the ideas and perceptions of gender and trans people started to shift. Gender norms and expressions were bent. Many feminists stopped wearing bras and makeup, hippies and the members of the Beatles grew their hair long, and gender-neutral fashion such as floral patterns became more popular. In 1966, a few months before the riot, Harry Benjamin, who treated Jorgensen, published his book The Transsexual Phenomenon. In the 1950s and 1960s, Benjamin offered information, hormones, and sex reassignment surgery to trans people, and not long before the riot opened a San Francisco practice located at nearby 450 Sutter Street, which has been described as a contributing factor, as many of the trans women who were a part of Compton's Cafeteria received treatment from Benjamin. Benjamin's book The Transsexual Phenomenon further legitimized the concept of being transgender to not only the public, but also the medical community. The book also popularized the concept of medical transition as a way to treat trans patients. In the following years after the book was published, several universities opened gender clinics. From 1964 to 1967, Reed Erickson, a wealthy trans man, helped establish and fund many of these clinics through the Erickson Educational Foundation. In the mid- to late 1960s, the clinic at Johns Hopkins University was making plans to offer medical transition surgeries.
Tenderloin district
The Oxford English Dictionary's second definition of "tenderloin" definition listed is for the slang term (in full, "tenderloin district") that means "the police district of New York which includes the great mass of theatres, hotels, and places of amusement; thence extended to similar districts of other American cities." Under the second definition, there is a note that a tenderloin district is "understood to have reference to the large amount of 'graft' said to be got by the police for protecting illegitimate houses in this district, which rendered it the 'juicy part' of the service." In simpler terms, "tenderloin district" refers to a district characterized by corrupt police that will not report illegal activities in exchange for money.
The Tenderloin district of San Francisco was always inhabited by traditionally marginalized peoples — working-class people, people of color, etc. In the early 1960s, there was a push for "urban renewal" of the waterfront North Beach neighborhood and South of Market neighborhood, which were visibly gay, working-class areas. Through intense policing and targeted redevelopment of the neighborhoods, residents were pushed out and forced to relocate. Many relocated to the Tenderloin district, which is directly adjacent to South of Market and a few blocks away from North Beach. This relocation made the Tenderloin an area largely made up of queer and trans people. There were a few gay bars in the district already, but many more were established as the LGBTQ population continued to grow.
Sex work in the Tenderloin
Many trans women and drag queens did sex work, which many of them referred to as "hustling", in order to survive. A number of the women that Susan Stryker interviewed for the 2005 documentary film Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton's Cafeteria, who were all members of the transgender community in the Tenderloin district during the time of the riot at Compton's Cafeteria, were involved in street prostitution. Among these women was Tamara Ching, who later became a sex-workers-rights activist. They ended up in the profession, many of them lamented, because they faced job discrimination and systematic marginalization. Eventually, they stopped trying to seek employment elsewhere, though some "fortunate" ones were saved from the dangers of street prostitution because they could "pass" (i.e., be perceived as cisgender by society) and get other jobs, such as singers and dancers. Sex workers faced police harassment and abuse by their clients. Some of the women were able to pick up clients in bars and clubs, but many establishments didn't want them to work there because it was illegal and police could raid the building at any time. Many of the women were forced to work on the streets, which many of them felt was more dangerous. Many were murdered or assaulted, and there was even a serial killer that specifically targeted, mutilated, and killed trans women sex workers (especially those working on the streets) in the Tenderloin. Felicia "Flames" Elizondo, a participant in the riot, recalled in 2015 that "a lot of people thought we were sick, mental trash. Nobody cared whether we lived or died. Our own families abandoned us, and we had nowhere to go."
Compton's Cafeteria
Compton's Cafeteria was a chain of cafeterias owned by Gene Compton in San Francisco from the 1940s to the 1970s. The Tenderloin location of Compton's at 101 Taylor Street (at Turk)—open from 1954 to 1972—was a popular meeting place for transgender people, especially trans women, to congregate publicly in the city. The cafeteria was more of a place to socialize than a restaurant. Compton's was one of the few places that they could meet, as many trans women were unwelcome in gay bars due to transphobia. The reason they were so unwelcome in gay bars is because since cross dressing was subject to arrest, this put gay bars at risk. Before the riot, the cafeteria was open all night, so trans people and drag queens could meet up after a long night of "hustling" (i.e. doing sex work).
Compton's management and staff, in an effort to deter drag queens and trans women, frequently called the police when they were present, causing them to be harassed and arrested for a crime called "female impersonation". Police would also come into Compton's without being called because they knew that there were likely people present whom they could harass and arrest. Police could arrest the drag queens and trans women for wearing articles of women's clothing or makeup. One of the trans women in Screaming Queens noted that a trans woman could get arrested for having the buttons on the "wrong" side (i.e. the left side of the shirt, where buttons tend to be placed on women's clothing). Because cross-dressing was illegal at the time, police could use the presence of transgender people in a bar as a pretext for making a raid and closing the establishment. Before the riot, there were often physical fights between customers that occurred from 2:00-3:00 am, which was another reason police could raid and close the restaurant. The cafeteria was open all hours until the riot occurred. After the riot, Compton's Cafeteria began to close at midnight in an effort to prevent more conflict. In 1972, the cafeteria closed for good. No records of the building's exterior appearance at the time were known to have survived, until in 2021 photos surfaced on social media that had been taken in 1970 of an unrelated event and showed Compton's Cafeteria in the background.
Youth activism
In 1965, two groups of queer youth, Vanguard and the Street Orphans, were involved in the riot and events leading up to it. Vanguard was formed in 1965 and was the first known gay youth organization in the United States. It was initially founded under the Glide Memorial Church, a radical offshoot of the Methodist Church and a center for progressive social activism in the Tenderloin. The Street Orphans were a gang of lesbian youth founded in the Tenderloin.
Vanguard began publishing a eponymous magazine, titled Vanguard, about a month before the Compton's riot. The publication was attributed to shaping the political consciousness in the queer community as "the issues facing gay and transgender youth in the 1960s produced radical insights into the connections between economic class, police violence, incarceration, and homophobia". Many hustlers and street queens involved in the riot were members of Vanguard. The cafeteria kicked Vanguard members out, often citing that they would not buy anything. In Screaming Queens, Susan Stryker explained that these incidents "lit the fuse that led directly to the riot." In response to both the aforementioned and police harassment of trans people, Vanguard picketed at Compton's Cafeteria on July 19, 1966. There was an article titled "Young Homos Picket Compton's" published about the demonstration in a local newspaper. Although the picket was unsuccessful, it was one of the first demonstrations against police violence directed towards transgender people in San Francisco and ultimately led to the Compton's Cafeteria riot.
Riot
In the 1960s the Compton's Cafeteria staff would frequently call the police on transgender customers. Management felt that they were loitering and causing them to lose business. In response, they implemented a service fee directed at transgender individuals and harassed them in an attempt to get them to leave the restaurant. It was common for the police to come into Compton's, arrest people for the crime of "female impersonation." For over fifty years drag queens were abused by the San Francisco police department, often arrested them for sex work and for violating the city's cross dressing law (which was repealed in 1974).
The Compton's Cafeteria riot began on an August night of 1966, the month directly following the July Vanguard picket. The exact date is unknown because there was no media coverage at the time and San Francisco's 1960s police records no longer exist. One of the riot's participants claimed that the riot occurred on a "hot" weekend night. A Compton's worker called the police claiming that some transgender customers became raucous. The police responded to the call and came to Compton's. When one of the cops grabbed and attempted to arrest a trans woman, she threw a cup of coffee in his face. According to the director of Screaming Queens, Susan Stryker, the cafeteria "erupted". Patrons also said that they threw many items, such as sugar shakers, tables, and dinnerware at the police and at the windows, causing them to shatter. They also hit the cops with their purses and high heels. In order to request backup, the police retreated into the streets, where the fighting continued. The protesters damaged a police car and burned down a sidewalk newsstand. The police responded by fighting back, and they tried to arrest the protesters and load them into paddy wagons. Elliott Blackstone, who was a part of the San Francisco police at the time of the riot, said that "there was unnecessary violence" from cops on the night of the Compton's Cafeteria riot.
The next day, more transgender people, hustlers, Tenderloin street people, and other members of the LGBT community returned to the cafeteria to picket because Compton's Cafeteria would not let them enter the establishment. The demonstration ended with the newly installed plate-glass windows being smashed again. Compton's Cafeteria business declined over the years after the riot, and finally closed in 1972.