On Sunday, May 18th, transgender activists in San Francisco rallied at the site of the historic Compton Cafeteria riot of 1966, a turning point in LGBTQ+ activism that occurred three years before Stonewall.
In the 1960s, there was a restaurant in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco called Compton’s Cafeteria. It was one of many in a chain of restaurants owned by Gene Compton.
Many trans people at the time would meet and congregate at that location as they weren’t welcomed in many gay bars due to transphobia. Eventually, staff and management caught on to this and instead of accepting their business, they wanted to deter them from the location as they believed their presence would drive away other customers.
From then on, they began calling police on transgender patrons, essentially harassing them out of their establishment. During one of these police raids in August of 1966, a transgender woman being arrested reportedly threw a cup of coffee into an officer’s face, instigating the riot.
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Today, Compton’s Cafeteria has since closed, and the building is now owned by a correctional facility that converted the building into a halfway house. Modern trans activists are arguing that the location is a historical landmark in the LGBTQ+ community, and that using the space as a halfway house goes against the building’s legacy and preservation.
To spread their message, protestors draped two banners over the building featuring the words “Liberate Compton’s.”
The current building owner’s permit to use the building as a halfway house is set to expire at the end of June. Activists are hoping that the board of appeals will decline to renew the contract in hopes that they’d be left with no choice but to sell the building. From there, a nomination application could be submitted to the City’s Planning Department to initiate the site being recognized as a historical landmark.
I feel as though it is more important now than ever to preserve our history in an administration that is trying to remove any public acknowledgement of transgender people. I can only hope this building does get converted into an educational space so that future generations of trans youth can understand the struggles we faced to get where we are, and why it is important to keep fighting for your spot in society no matter how trivial it may seem.
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