To mark October as Gay and Lesbian History Month, several individuals have written pieces detailing events in history, and their feelings about these happenings. The effort is coordinated by Philadelphia Gay News and syndicated to dozens of gay publications. Windy City Times will run these articles throughout the month of October.
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 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 '60s: '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.
As for the contention that queens weren't the only ones rebelling that August night, but that male hustlers and lesbians also took part, Stryker says, 'I say that's true.' However, Stryker wanted to emphasize the role queens played because they are often 'pushed to the margins' in the LGBT community, even today. 'The escalating tensions ( at Compton's ) were around the mistreatment of transgenders,' she said.
The response to the documentary has been positive, especially from the transgender community. 'I was very leery in wanting to get involved with the East vs. West Coast thing or San Francisco did it first,' says Stryker. 'I didn't want to present Compton's as trumping Stonewall.'
Tommi Avicolli Mecca is a former editor of the Philadelphia Gay News, author of Between Little Rock and a Hard Place and co-editor of Hey Paesan: Writings by Lesbians and Gay Men of Italian Descent. His work has appeared in publications throughout the country, including the San Francisco Examiner, Philadelphia Daily News, SF Bay Guardian and Newsday as well as in numerous anthologies. He lives in San Francisco.
