WEBVTT - Compton's Cafeteria: The Riot Before Stonewall 0:00:00.240 --> 0:00:03.480 But We Loved is a production of iHeart Podcasts and 0:00:03.560 --> 0:00:05.640 The Outspoken podcast Network. 0:00:07.280 --> 0:00:10.760 She was sitting at a table with some friends and 0:00:10.880 --> 0:00:15.520 the police pull up and one of the queens threw 0:00:15.600 --> 0:00:19.680 coffee in the CoP's face, and the other cop pulls 0:00:19.720 --> 0:00:22.880 out as billy club and somebody clocked him in the 0:00:22.960 --> 0:00:26.400 head with one of those big round sugar shakers and 0:00:26.520 --> 0:00:33.040 knocks them down, and the place just erupted. Trans women 0:00:33.080 --> 0:00:36.560 would like they'd have liquor bottles and they're big heavy purses. 0:00:36.840 --> 0:00:39.639 They would use that purse to like clock people with it, 0:00:39.960 --> 0:00:42.839 or like you take off a high heeled shoe and 0:00:42.880 --> 0:00:45.280 it's like, oh, stiletto heels is like they can punch 0:00:45.280 --> 0:00:49.199 a hole in your skull if you hit somebody with them. 0:00:49.479 --> 0:00:53.479 The idea that street queens would fight back against the 0:00:53.520 --> 0:01:00.520 cops just blew people's minds. 0:01:00.840 --> 0:01:03.840 As a gay kid, growing up religious and in the South, 0:01:04.120 --> 0:01:06.200 I thought being gay was the worst thing I could 0:01:06.240 --> 0:01:10.440 ever be. Now, as a journalist, I'm trying to unlearn 0:01:10.520 --> 0:01:14.280 that by seeking out our history, and what I've found 0:01:14.400 --> 0:01:19.800 are people and stories full of courage, perseverance, and love. 0:01:20.560 --> 0:01:24.399 In this episode, we'll meet Susan Striker, the historian who 0:01:24.440 --> 0:01:28.240 discovered the buried story of the nineteen sixty six Compton's 0:01:28.280 --> 0:01:32.959 Cafeteria riot, the first known full scale queer riot against 0:01:33.040 --> 0:01:36.920 police harassment in American history. We'll learn about the incident 0:01:37.360 --> 0:01:40.279 and why it was never talked about for almost forty 0:01:40.400 --> 0:01:44.480 years from my Heart podcast. I'm Jordan and Solve and 0:01:44.560 --> 0:02:11.800 this is what we loved. Right after college, I moved 0:02:11.840 --> 0:02:14.720 to San Francisco for a job. I used to get 0:02:14.760 --> 0:02:18.520 my haircut in this neighborhood called the Tenderlin, and one day, 0:02:18.840 --> 0:02:21.160 as I was about to cross the street to my barber, 0:02:21.800 --> 0:02:25.080 I realized that I was standing on a plaque that 0:02:25.280 --> 0:02:28.000 told me I was at a historic site, the site 0:02:28.280 --> 0:02:33.160 of Compton's Cafeteria. It said it was the first known 0:02:33.280 --> 0:02:38.000 full scale riot for transgender and gay rights in American history. 0:02:39.800 --> 0:02:43.120 I thought Stonewall was the first, so I went home 0:02:43.160 --> 0:02:47.600 and googled it and a documentary came up called Screaming Queens. 0:02:48.440 --> 0:02:51.400 It was about a queer historian who happened to find 0:02:51.440 --> 0:02:56.440 a document that referenced a queer riot before Stonewall and 0:02:56.720 --> 0:03:00.320 her journey to realize that it was actually the first 0:03:00.400 --> 0:03:05.640 known instance of collective, militant queer resistance to police harassment 0:03:05.880 --> 0:03:10.760 in United States history. My next guest is that historian 0:03:11.160 --> 0:03:14.639 Susan Striker. In the nineties, she went to UC Berkeley 0:03:14.720 --> 0:03:18.040 for her PhD, and around that time she came out 0:03:18.120 --> 0:03:23.560 as transgender. As a result, it became extremely difficult to 0:03:23.639 --> 0:03:28.679 find work, putting her into poverty. It was then, when 0:03:28.680 --> 0:03:32.400 she was at her lowest, that she unearthed the courageous 0:03:32.440 --> 0:03:46.920 story of Compton's Cafeteria. What was your story around coming out? 0:03:47.160 --> 0:03:49.800 Well, you know, it's it's hard to say exactly. 0:03:50.040 --> 0:03:53.000 I think being a trans person, it's a little different 0:03:53.080 --> 0:03:55.200 than what I would think of as more like a 0:03:55.240 --> 0:03:58.480 cis gay coming out story. It's not like I just 0:03:58.520 --> 0:04:00.840 said like, hey, I'm trans and then that was all 0:04:00.840 --> 0:04:03.480 there was to it, because you know, a transition is 0:04:03.840 --> 0:04:07.120 is not something that happens overnight. So I just feel 0:04:07.120 --> 0:04:10.760 like I had a very gradual process. There was the 0:04:10.840 --> 0:04:15.000 moment that I came out to my mother, who lives 0:04:15.000 --> 0:04:18.320 in Oklahoma, and I told her that I needed to 0:04:18.360 --> 0:04:22.440 come home and that I had some big news that 0:04:22.600 --> 0:04:23.599 wasn't bad news. 0:04:24.520 --> 0:04:27.080 And I'd been on hormones. 0:04:26.640 --> 0:04:29.520 For I don't know, maybe close to a year at 0:04:29.520 --> 0:04:32.679 that point, and it was getting to the point where, 0:04:32.880 --> 0:04:35.560 you know, it's like it was noticeable. So when I 0:04:35.600 --> 0:04:38.760 went home, I said to Mom, I'm just going to 0:04:38.760 --> 0:04:41.400 put it right out there. It's just like I'm trans 0:04:41.440 --> 0:04:45.480 and I'm in the process of changing my gender. And 0:04:45.520 --> 0:04:49.400 she says, well, I thought you were going to tell 0:04:49.440 --> 0:04:51.640 me that you were gay in HIV positive, so I 0:04:51.680 --> 0:04:55.719 guess that's good news. And I said, well, you know, 0:04:55.760 --> 0:04:58.560 I told you it was big news, not bad news. 0:04:59.120 --> 0:05:03.120 Having an HIV diagnosis and you know, ninety one ninety 0:05:03.160 --> 0:05:06.760 two would have been would have been very bad news. 0:05:07.000 --> 0:05:11.800 But you know, Mom took it pretty well. Honestly. We 0:05:11.839 --> 0:05:17.160 had a big conversation and she wound up say like, well, Okay, 0:05:17.360 --> 0:05:22.320 this wasn't what I was expecting, but I actually have 0:05:22.360 --> 0:05:24.599 to go back to work now, so why don't you 0:05:24.800 --> 0:05:27.600 just go to my closet pick out anything I have 0:05:27.800 --> 0:05:30.760 that you know fits you, and you can just have 0:05:30.800 --> 0:05:32.479 it and it'll just give me an excuse to go 0:05:32.520 --> 0:05:36.680 shopping for more clothes. So, you know, ultimately, that was 0:05:36.720 --> 0:05:38.200 a pretty good response. 0:05:39.040 --> 0:05:42.560 That's pretty awesome. I wonder what it was like for 0:05:42.680 --> 0:05:48.520 you to transition in the nineties, given that the landscape 0:05:48.560 --> 0:05:52.359 of role models was so different from what it is today. 0:05:53.320 --> 0:05:56.120 Yeah, you know, there weren't a lot of role models 0:05:56.520 --> 0:06:00.240 in the early nineties for me, and it was a 0:06:00.240 --> 0:06:04.719 really different historical moment where it's like, however hard things 0:06:04.760 --> 0:06:07.440 still are for trans people, and however much we are 0:06:07.800 --> 0:06:14.440 right now in the crosshairs of a really vicious backlash 0:06:15.440 --> 0:06:19.159 that there are more visible role models. And back in 0:06:19.200 --> 0:06:21.719 the nineties, if you came out as trans, that meant, 0:06:21.800 --> 0:06:24.000 you know, you were a mentally ill person and you 0:06:24.000 --> 0:06:25.560 were going to lose your job, and you're going to 0:06:25.600 --> 0:06:28.960 lose your family, and you could be legally discriminated against. 0:06:29.800 --> 0:06:32.400 It was a hard decision to make in the sense that, 0:06:32.560 --> 0:06:33.919 you know, I knew that I needed to do it 0:06:33.960 --> 0:06:38.159 for myself, but I was very aware of what the 0:06:38.240 --> 0:06:42.320 social cost was going to be. I was transitioning right 0:06:42.360 --> 0:06:44.719 at the end of finishing up a PhD in US 0:06:44.800 --> 0:06:49.000 History at UC Berkeley. That to come out as trans 0:06:49.960 --> 0:06:53.479 was pretty much to say, I have chosen to be unemployable, 0:06:53.640 --> 0:06:56.159 you know. And I call my first seven years post 0:06:56.200 --> 0:07:00.599 PhD my unpaid internship and transgender studies because I think 0:07:00.640 --> 0:07:04.159 I was making, you know, by hook or by crook, 0:07:04.240 --> 0:07:07.120 I was able to scrape together you know, usually less 0:07:07.120 --> 0:07:09.440 than about ten thousand dollars a year to live on. 0:07:09.960 --> 0:07:12.560 It was difficult, but I was also doing some of 0:07:12.600 --> 0:07:16.280 the work, not compensated in terms of salary, but sort 0:07:16.280 --> 0:07:19.440 of doing the work of putting together my sort of 0:07:19.440 --> 0:07:23.600 basic understanding of what the Bay Area's transgender history was. 0:07:23.800 --> 0:07:26.760 And so it's all right, well, this is sort of 0:07:26.760 --> 0:07:29.440 what I'm going to do. I'm going to figure out 0:07:29.480 --> 0:07:31.720 how to try to do a kind of historical work 0:07:31.760 --> 0:07:35.960 that served me personally and kind of by extension, I 0:07:35.960 --> 0:07:38.520 hoped would serve anybody who was in a similar set 0:07:38.560 --> 0:07:41.280 of life circumstances, you know, other trans people and queer 0:07:41.280 --> 0:07:44.960 people who really needed to know that we are a 0:07:44.960 --> 0:07:47.320 people with a past. We didn't just sort of, you know, 0:07:47.440 --> 0:07:52.040 PLoP down from Mars. So even though I wasn't necessarily 0:07:52.080 --> 0:07:55.720 getting paid to do that work, it's like it totally 0:07:56.000 --> 0:07:58.760 rewarded me and compensated me to do that work at 0:07:58.800 --> 0:08:02.640 an emotional and political level. And I was just happy 0:08:02.640 --> 0:08:06.320 to be able to share what I was learning by 0:08:06.360 --> 0:08:08.080 doing that research with other people. 0:08:08.960 --> 0:08:12.920 Well, how did you first hear about Compton's Cafeteria. 0:08:13.840 --> 0:08:20.280 Well, when I was in early transition, I just showed 0:08:20.360 --> 0:08:23.040 up at this organization that was then called the Gay 0:08:23.120 --> 0:08:27.560 and Lesbian Historical Society, which was a community based archives 0:08:27.600 --> 0:08:30.760 and history project in San Francisco. And I said, hey, 0:08:30.920 --> 0:08:33.559 I'm actually an academically trained historian. 0:08:33.720 --> 0:08:34.640 I'm trans. 0:08:34.720 --> 0:08:37.439 I don't have a snowball's chance in hell of getting 0:08:37.440 --> 0:08:40.240 an academic job right now, and I just want to 0:08:40.280 --> 0:08:43.440 show up and volunteer, which I did, and it was 0:08:43.480 --> 0:08:46.720 doing work there that I came across. One of the 0:08:46.720 --> 0:08:50.440 founders of the organization was this guy named Greg Pennington, 0:08:51.320 --> 0:08:56.400 and he had been collecting gay and lesbian community newspapers 0:08:56.480 --> 0:08:59.960 back into the fifties and sixties, and he had started 0:09:01.080 --> 0:09:06.400 working on a chronology of San Francisco's gay history. So like, 0:09:06.440 --> 0:09:10.720 there was this page that said, like August nineteen sixty six, 0:09:10.760 --> 0:09:12.800 and he was listing all of these things that had 0:09:12.800 --> 0:09:17.560 happened in nineteen sixty six, and there was one that 0:09:17.679 --> 0:09:24.719 said drag Queen's riot against police at Compton's Cafeteria. It's 0:09:24.760 --> 0:09:28.640 like what And I asked Greg about it. He said, oh, yeah, 0:09:28.679 --> 0:09:32.560 that was something I came across in some publication that 0:09:32.679 --> 0:09:35.440 was called Gay Pride Quarterly number one. And I could 0:09:35.440 --> 0:09:40.319 not find that publication to learn any more about it, 0:09:40.760 --> 0:09:43.400 and I was keeping my eye out for anything that 0:09:43.480 --> 0:09:46.840 I could find about that story because I was just 0:09:46.880 --> 0:09:52.840 intrigued by it. And in nineteen ninety five, a friend 0:09:52.880 --> 0:09:54.520 of mine and I were working on a book called 0:09:54.600 --> 0:09:56.640 Gay by the Bay, a History of queer culture in 0:09:56.640 --> 0:09:58.880 the San Francisco Bay Area, and I just had this 0:09:59.000 --> 0:10:00.000 question in my mind. 0:10:00.000 --> 0:10:01.600 It's like, well, you know, we should. 0:10:01.400 --> 0:10:06.079 Definitely say something about the first Pride parade that happens 0:10:06.080 --> 0:10:09.480 in San Francisco. And so there was a box of 0:10:09.559 --> 0:10:16.280 materials from San Francisco Gay Pride and looking through that 0:10:16.320 --> 0:10:22.240 material the program for the very first gay Pride parade 0:10:22.480 --> 0:10:26.680 in San Francisco from nineteen seventy two. I opened it up, 0:10:26.840 --> 0:10:29.640 opened the program up, and in the centerfold of that 0:10:29.760 --> 0:10:33.800 program there was this story. It says, hey, people were 0:10:33.800 --> 0:10:39.640 here to celebrate Stonewall, but don't forget gay Pride started 0:10:39.840 --> 0:10:44.920 in San Francisco three years earlier. It all started with 0:10:45.960 --> 0:10:48.800 a hot August night in nineteen sixty six when drag 0:10:48.880 --> 0:10:52.280 queens fought the cops at Compton's Cafeteria at the corner 0:10:52.280 --> 0:10:55.520 of Turk and Taylor Street. It's like, Ah, there's the story, 0:10:55.800 --> 0:10:58.160 but now do I believe it. It's like, how come 0:10:58.200 --> 0:11:01.640 I've never heard about this before? And it took me, 0:11:03.000 --> 0:11:06.920 i would say, about three more years of research to 0:11:07.000 --> 0:11:08.120 piece things together. 0:11:22.720 --> 0:11:26.520 Susan had just discovered a document about a riot led 0:11:26.520 --> 0:11:29.240 by drag queens in the sixties at a local diner. 0:11:30.040 --> 0:11:34.959 She figured that drag queens probably meant transgender women. If 0:11:35.000 --> 0:11:38.560 it was true, this was a big deal because it 0:11:38.600 --> 0:11:43.400 would have predated the Stonewall riots by three years. That diner, 0:11:43.679 --> 0:11:48.440 Jene Compton's Cafeteria, was in San Francisco's red light district 0:11:48.760 --> 0:11:53.040 called the Tenderloin, where many transgender women would perform sex 0:11:53.120 --> 0:11:57.080 work for survival. The twenty four hour diner was their 0:11:57.440 --> 0:12:01.480 respite for a warm cup of coffe or a visit 0:12:01.520 --> 0:12:05.920 with friends in between clients. Because Comptons served so many 0:12:05.960 --> 0:12:09.520 people in the criminal class, like sex workers and drug dealers, 0:12:10.200 --> 0:12:13.880 it was a target for police harassment. But according to 0:12:13.880 --> 0:12:19.080 Susan's research, one night, these queens had had enough. On 0:12:19.160 --> 0:12:22.520 an August night in nineteen sixty six, a fight broke 0:12:22.520 --> 0:12:27.920 out at Compton's cafeteria between those transgender diners and the cops. 0:12:29.559 --> 0:12:32.800 Before we get to actually what happened at Compton's cafeteria. 0:12:32.880 --> 0:12:35.520 I want to talk about what you discovered about the 0:12:35.559 --> 0:12:39.360 context of that time. What was it like for trans 0:12:39.480 --> 0:12:43.800 women living in San Francisco in the fifties and sixties. 0:12:44.480 --> 0:12:46.840 Well, you know, in some ways, it's like it is now. 0:12:46.880 --> 0:12:50.600 It's like the trans community, even the trans women community, 0:12:50.760 --> 0:12:52.280 is not monolithic. 0:12:52.360 --> 0:12:53.000 I mean, you've. 0:12:52.840 --> 0:12:56.160 Got people who are impoverished who are like doing survival 0:12:56.160 --> 0:12:59.160 sex works on the streets, and you've got people who 0:12:59.200 --> 0:13:03.920 are amorous quasi celebrities. But the people who were involved 0:13:03.920 --> 0:13:06.640 in the riot at Compton's, it's like they were people 0:13:06.800 --> 0:13:09.600 who were more socially marginalized. I think one of the 0:13:09.600 --> 0:13:13.440 things that was really different back in the nineteen fifties 0:13:13.440 --> 0:13:17.560 and sixties is that it was much more likely that 0:13:17.720 --> 0:13:20.720 if you were known to be trans, you would wind 0:13:20.800 --> 0:13:23.480 up living in a tenderloin like neighborhood, kind of a 0:13:23.520 --> 0:13:26.959 red light district. And that is certainly the way it 0:13:27.000 --> 0:13:30.360 worked in San Francisco. The tenderloin was a part of 0:13:30.400 --> 0:13:33.400 the city that was set aside for all kinds of 0:13:33.480 --> 0:13:39.720 illegal activities, criminalized activities that were tacitly allowed to take 0:13:39.800 --> 0:13:43.280 place by corrupt police officers. 0:13:43.480 --> 0:13:46.040 It's like where drug dealing would happen, and you know, 0:13:46.160 --> 0:13:48.079 maybe the dealer like pays off the cops. 0:13:48.160 --> 0:13:51.160 There was prostitution and then you know, madam gives the 0:13:51.200 --> 0:13:52.720 cops a little slice. 0:13:52.440 --> 0:13:52.960 Of the pie. 0:13:53.520 --> 0:13:57.880 Lots of corruption, lots of corruption, and those kinds of 0:13:57.960 --> 0:14:01.280 districts you called red light districts, tenderloin districts, whatever you 0:14:01.320 --> 0:14:05.080 want to call them. For most people, they were parts 0:14:05.080 --> 0:14:07.800 of the city that people would come into and leave. 0:14:07.840 --> 0:14:10.360 It's like, it's where you'd go to the after hours bars, 0:14:10.440 --> 0:14:12.520 it's where you'd go see a drag show, it's where 0:14:12.520 --> 0:14:15.080 you'd go score drugs, it's where you would, you know, 0:14:15.240 --> 0:14:18.920 go to buy sex for money. But for trans women, 0:14:19.320 --> 0:14:24.320 they were residential ghettos because of housing discrimination, employment discrimination, 0:14:24.760 --> 0:14:29.640 general social stigma. If you were out as trans and 0:14:29.760 --> 0:14:33.480 were transfeminine, it's that you would wind up in a 0:14:33.520 --> 0:14:37.880 sex work economy, living in a tenderloin style neighborhood and 0:14:37.960 --> 0:14:40.560 so to like live in what we're called queen's hotels, 0:14:40.680 --> 0:14:44.560 to be involved in sex work and to be brutalized 0:14:44.560 --> 0:14:47.920 by the police. That was a very common story for 0:14:48.000 --> 0:14:48.680 trans women. 0:14:49.080 --> 0:14:52.920 And how did Compton's Cafeteria fit into this scene. 0:14:53.200 --> 0:14:56.600 Compton's cafeteria was just you know, I think of it, it's 0:14:56.600 --> 0:14:59.640 like a clean, well lighted place for cheap food, you know, 0:14:59.680 --> 0:15:02.359 that would open twenty four hours a day, and everybody 0:15:02.400 --> 0:15:06.120 in the neighborhood went there. It's where the hustlers would 0:15:06.160 --> 0:15:08.600 hang out, It's where the street queens would hang out. 0:15:08.880 --> 0:15:13.160 Compton's was their safe space. It was a really important, 0:15:14.120 --> 0:15:18.760 unofficial community gathering spot. And it was just a cheap, 0:15:18.800 --> 0:15:23.280 well lighted place for food in a poor neighborhood that 0:15:23.400 --> 0:15:28.240 catered to people who were there for quote unquote vice activities. 0:15:29.080 --> 0:15:32.960 So for all of those reasons, it was a place 0:15:33.000 --> 0:15:34.920 that often drew police attention. 0:15:36.000 --> 0:15:40.680 And speaking of which this is a story about standing 0:15:40.760 --> 0:15:46.720 up to police harassment. What was the relationship between the 0:15:46.760 --> 0:15:50.760 cops and these queens in those days. 0:15:50.960 --> 0:15:54.960 Well, one of the interviewees in the film Screaming Queens 0:15:55.280 --> 0:15:59.000 Tomorrow Chank. She talks about how the police would come 0:15:59.000 --> 0:16:01.480 in and say you you, you, and you like come 0:16:01.520 --> 0:16:03.080 with us and just you know, throw them in the 0:16:03.120 --> 0:16:05.560 police wagon and take them off to jail. 0:16:06.400 --> 0:16:09.080 I remember when when the cops used to go in 0:16:09.080 --> 0:16:12.280 the bar and say you you, you, and you come 0:16:12.320 --> 0:16:13.440 with us. 0:16:13.560 --> 0:16:17.040 Or Amanda Saint James. Also in that film, she said 0:16:17.040 --> 0:16:19.160 there was this one cop who had it. 0:16:19.200 --> 0:16:19.800 In for her. 0:16:20.160 --> 0:16:22.600 I had one policeman that hated me with a passionate 0:16:22.760 --> 0:16:25.920 Every time you see me, he says, get in the 0:16:25.960 --> 0:16:30.600 paddy wagons. I just had my hamburger, he says, ed 0:16:30.680 --> 0:16:33.280 it Monday when you get out. 0:16:33.440 --> 0:16:40.760 So the general vibe was that transfeminine sex workers were 0:16:40.800 --> 0:16:44.560 just regarded as the bottom of the barrel, lowest rung 0:16:44.720 --> 0:16:48.360 of the social ladder, who could be abused with impunity. 0:16:48.960 --> 0:16:52.080 These women would tell me stories of how, like, you know, 0:16:52.160 --> 0:16:55.600 the police would raid for some kind of quality of 0:16:55.680 --> 0:16:58.960 life disturbance. It's like, oh, you're creating a public nuisance, 0:16:59.120 --> 0:17:03.160 or you're gauging and lude and lascivious behavior in public. 0:17:03.480 --> 0:17:06.240 These these kinds of laws that were basically like we 0:17:06.280 --> 0:17:08.160 can bust you for being trans in public. 0:17:08.880 --> 0:17:10.640 They talked about being. 0:17:10.760 --> 0:17:13.320 Driven around in the back of a police car for 0:17:13.440 --> 0:17:16.760 hours and hours, of being forced to perform oral. 0:17:16.800 --> 0:17:18.320 Sex, of being raped. 0:17:18.520 --> 0:17:20.840 Like you get to jail and it's like they would 0:17:21.080 --> 0:17:24.639 sort of strip you in front of, you know, other prisoners, 0:17:24.640 --> 0:17:26.600 Like they would shave women's heads. 0:17:27.400 --> 0:17:30.639 I didn't know wasn't bothering anybody but I was dressing 0:17:30.640 --> 0:17:32.240 as a woman the way I feel. So they put 0:17:32.280 --> 0:17:35.679 me in jail, shave my head, or I refuse to 0:17:35.800 --> 0:17:37.919 let them shave my head, and they put me in 0:17:37.920 --> 0:17:41.200 the hole and lock up. One girl was in there 0:17:41.240 --> 0:17:44.479 sixty days in the hole because she wouldn't let them 0:17:44.480 --> 0:17:46.600 cut their hair. That's how important it was to us 0:17:46.720 --> 0:17:49.960 back then. They were you know, it was like they 0:17:49.960 --> 0:17:53.760 were trying to humiliate us, that we weren't human beings, 0:17:53.840 --> 0:17:55.400 so they should humiliate us. 0:17:55.920 --> 0:17:59.880 Trans women could be violated with impunity at the time, 0:18:00.240 --> 0:18:03.840 nobody gave a damn. I read the gay press from 0:18:03.840 --> 0:18:07.480 that time, and there was a newspaper called Citizens News, 0:18:07.880 --> 0:18:10.800 and the guy who edited that newspaper, he would talk 0:18:10.840 --> 0:18:15.800 about what he called the walking eye sores along Market Street, 0:18:15.840 --> 0:18:18.200 and he met trans women. You look at the gay 0:18:18.320 --> 0:18:20.320 organizing that was happened at the time, and they would say, 0:18:20.400 --> 0:18:23.000 like these queens, you know, give gay people a bad name. 0:18:23.400 --> 0:18:26.199 It's like trans women were just the bottom of the 0:18:26.200 --> 0:18:31.560 barrel and they had nothing to lose when they fought back. 0:18:32.640 --> 0:18:36.560 I really think police violence and police targeting of queer 0:18:36.600 --> 0:18:40.880 people is the single biggest driver of queer history. I mean, 0:18:40.920 --> 0:18:43.679 that's the Stonewall story as well as the Compton story. 0:18:44.080 --> 0:18:47.920 That's the story of many bar fights and street actions. 0:18:48.600 --> 0:18:53.960 Our history is really motivated, I think, by resistance to 0:18:54.600 --> 0:18:58.600 prejudicial state actions carried out by the police through the 0:18:58.640 --> 0:19:01.680 criminalization of our life. There's a you know, we can 0:19:01.680 --> 0:19:06.040 tell a story about why on that night? Why was 0:19:06.080 --> 0:19:09.679 that night different from all other nights? Because the oppression 0:19:10.040 --> 0:19:13.480 that trans women were facing from the police and their 0:19:13.720 --> 0:19:18.959 exclusion and stigmatization within a broader public, it was chronic, 0:19:19.000 --> 0:19:22.160 it was routine. So like, why on one night did 0:19:22.160 --> 0:19:22.960 they fight back? 0:19:24.119 --> 0:19:26.360 How did the riot start? 0:19:27.240 --> 0:19:29.720 As near as I can make out, there was a 0:19:29.720 --> 0:19:34.280 little precursor incident. There was a woman named Dixie McClain 0:19:34.720 --> 0:19:37.840 who got into some kind of altercation with a police 0:19:37.880 --> 0:19:43.399 officer at another eatery, this place called the Doggie Diner, 0:19:43.800 --> 0:19:48.199 which was a few blocks away from Compton's, and she 0:19:48.880 --> 0:19:52.720 managed to leave that altercation and go to comptence and 0:19:52.800 --> 0:19:56.400 apparently she was sitting at a table with some friends 0:19:57.080 --> 0:20:00.240 and the police pull up. There were two cops who 0:20:00.280 --> 0:20:03.800 went into the restaurant apparently looking for her. We have 0:20:03.880 --> 0:20:06.840 eyewitness accounts of like the cops come in and they 0:20:06.880 --> 0:20:10.800 seem to be looking for someone. They focus on this 0:20:10.880 --> 0:20:14.600 one queen sitting at a table with her friends, and 0:20:14.640 --> 0:20:17.560 that they came over to her and one of the 0:20:17.640 --> 0:20:21.000 queens threw coffee in the CoP's face, you know, and 0:20:21.040 --> 0:20:24.640 he stumbles and falls over backwards, and the other cop 0:20:24.640 --> 0:20:28.240 who's there pulls out his billy club and somebody clocked 0:20:28.320 --> 0:20:30.600 him in the head with one of those big round 0:20:30.600 --> 0:20:35.480 sugar shakers and knocks them down. But then there were 0:20:35.520 --> 0:20:39.000 already sirens that people hurt. It's like there were other 0:20:40.280 --> 0:20:43.800 police officers pulling up, and it's like, oh, like this 0:20:44.000 --> 0:20:47.080 was a planned raid. These two cops were coming in 0:20:47.119 --> 0:20:50.399 for this one particular person, but that they were planning 0:20:50.480 --> 0:20:51.880 on doing more of a sweep. 0:20:53.160 --> 0:20:55.760 All of the sugar shakers went through the windows and 0:20:55.800 --> 0:20:59.119 the glass doors. I think I've put a sugar shaker 0:20:59.160 --> 0:21:00.120 through one of those. 0:21:00.920 --> 0:21:05.399 And the place just erupted. The patrons broke out the 0:21:05.440 --> 0:21:07.639 windows of the diner. They were like fighting with the 0:21:07.640 --> 0:21:09.600 two cops who were there, who get pushed out under 0:21:09.640 --> 0:21:12.600 the streets. They were breaking out the windows. Other cop 0:21:12.680 --> 0:21:16.320 cars are pulling up, and the best account that I 0:21:16.320 --> 0:21:20.160 have found says that there were a few hundred people 0:21:20.480 --> 0:21:24.600 in the streets fighting with the police. Trans women would 0:21:24.960 --> 0:21:28.560 take like they'd have liquor bottles and they're big, heavy purses, 0:21:28.920 --> 0:21:31.240 and like they would use that purse or like clock 0:21:31.320 --> 0:21:33.320 people with it, or like you take off a high 0:21:33.320 --> 0:21:36.520 heeled shoe and it's like those stiletto heels is like 0:21:36.560 --> 0:21:38.520 they can punch a hole in your skull if you 0:21:38.600 --> 0:21:42.200 hit somebody with them. So I actually kind of love 0:21:42.320 --> 0:21:46.959 that sense of trans women turning these like accoutrement of 0:21:47.400 --> 0:21:51.919 femininity into weapons for fighting the police who are trying 0:21:51.960 --> 0:21:56.440 to oppress them. Not only did they trash the interior 0:21:56.520 --> 0:22:00.240 of Compton's, but they burned down a newspaper stand that 0:22:00.280 --> 0:22:03.639 was at the corner that people were taking the newspapers 0:22:03.720 --> 0:22:06.960 and lighting them on fire, and the little fires all 0:22:07.000 --> 0:22:11.720 over the intersection. Police cards are being vandalized. It was 0:22:11.760 --> 0:22:16.600 a major, major incident. It probably went on for you know, 0:22:16.640 --> 0:22:19.280 it's say at least an hour, and that eventually there 0:22:19.280 --> 0:22:22.240 were some people who were arrested taken to jail. 0:22:22.520 --> 0:22:25.240 So there was this tremendous. 0:22:24.440 --> 0:22:29.200 Sense of a pent up rage at how people were treated. 0:22:29.760 --> 0:22:33.200 Susan, the story you're telling sounds like it was such 0:22:33.200 --> 0:22:36.720 a pivotal moment in queer history, So why do you 0:22:36.840 --> 0:22:40.160 think it was never told for almost forty years. 0:22:40.720 --> 0:22:45.000 One of the things that really surprises me, it's like, 0:22:45.240 --> 0:22:48.840 why is this not something that is recorded in the 0:22:48.840 --> 0:22:53.160 mainstream press. Why was there no footage of the riot itself. Well, 0:22:53.200 --> 0:22:56.879 it turns out that back in the day, the television 0:22:57.040 --> 0:23:01.240 news agencies they really only had filmed cruise out six 0:23:01.320 --> 0:23:04.520 days a week, and so like after midnight on Saturday, 0:23:04.560 --> 0:23:07.240 if it happened on Sunday, there wasn't going to be 0:23:07.280 --> 0:23:11.280 a crew out there, which leads me to think Riyat 0:23:11.320 --> 0:23:14.320 happened on Sunday. We have still not been able to 0:23:14.359 --> 0:23:17.720 pin down definitively exactly what the date was, because people 0:23:17.760 --> 0:23:23.600 remember things, but there was no contemporary written documentation of it. 0:23:24.000 --> 0:23:27.760 The police records have been disappeared. I looked at the 0:23:27.960 --> 0:23:32.680 television news logs. There was no film crew out there 0:23:32.720 --> 0:23:36.679 for it, There was no coverage of it in the 0:23:36.720 --> 0:23:41.159 mainstream newspapers. And I think mostly it was because it 0:23:41.880 --> 0:23:44.639 just kind of seemed like an impossible thing, just like 0:23:44.680 --> 0:23:48.920 there was the idea that street queens would fight back 0:23:48.960 --> 0:23:53.400 against the cops just blew people's minds. It was this 0:23:53.720 --> 0:23:59.760 moment of a really unprecedented political response on the part 0:23:59.760 --> 0:24:03.080 of one of the most marginalized people in society to 0:24:03.280 --> 0:24:07.040 fighting back against the structural oppression that just kept a 0:24:07.080 --> 0:24:10.280 boot on their neck. Nobody had seen anything like that. 0:24:10.720 --> 0:24:14.159 I know that the police had good relations with the press, 0:24:14.200 --> 0:24:17.200 and I honestly think they killed the story. 0:24:31.280 --> 0:24:34.359 On a late summer night in nineteen sixty six, a 0:24:34.400 --> 0:24:37.919 group of transgender women who had been regularly harassed by 0:24:38.000 --> 0:24:41.600 the cops stood up to them by fighting back. They 0:24:41.680 --> 0:24:45.439 destroyed a police car, set the corner newspaper stand on fire, 0:24:45.920 --> 0:24:50.120 and broke the windows at Compton's enrage. No one had 0:24:50.280 --> 0:24:53.800 ever seen anything like this, a bunch of queens standing 0:24:53.840 --> 0:24:57.240 up to the cops. The Compton's riot was a big deal. 0:24:57.920 --> 0:25:01.400 Many of the women involved said. The police largely left 0:25:01.400 --> 0:25:04.359 them alone after that night, which is what they'd always 0:25:04.359 --> 0:25:11.320 wanted to live without being harassed. So after the riot, 0:25:11.760 --> 0:25:17.240 how did the relationship between the queens and the cops change. 0:25:18.440 --> 0:25:22.560 It's really hard as a historian to say one thing 0:25:22.920 --> 0:25:28.119 caused another thing. I do think the riot was something 0:25:28.160 --> 0:25:30.639