Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is stuff you
Speaker 2: should Know. It's one of our overlooked history editions. And Chuck,
Speaker 2: this is your pick, and hats off to you, Wiggs
Speaker 2: off to you.
Speaker 1: Yes, it was my selection to pass along to Livia
Speaker 1: to help us with. But this is a listener suggestion.
Speaker 1: This came from gg Cowlin and big thanks to Gigi
Speaker 1: because I and I'm sure you will agree with me,
Speaker 1: found that not only is the story of the Compton's
Speaker 1: Cafeteria Riot interesting in and of itself, but sort of
Speaker 1: the larger story, or a part of the story, is
Speaker 1: the fact that how we preserve history because Compton's Cafeteria
Speaker 1: Riot happened in nineteen sixty six and was almost lost
Speaker 1: to history.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree with all of that, which is.
Speaker 1: Crazy to think about something that happened in nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: six in San Francisco could be lost to history. But
Speaker 1: it almost was if not for the efforts of one
Speaker 1: Susan Striker, one person like, yeah, this may have really
Speaker 1: gone away, Oh totally, I mean it had gone away,
Speaker 1: and she managed to clutch together a bunch of just
Speaker 1: different tiny little scraps of mentions of it or.
Speaker 2: Put like the neighborhood and just just over the years
Speaker 2: cobbled together all this little stuff and finally got an
Speaker 2: idea of it and was able to corroborate it like
Speaker 2: it was Gonsville until Susan Striker came along.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we'll talk about what Susan Striker did with
Speaker 1: this information. But hats off to you, Susan Striker and Digigi.
Speaker 1: And here we go with the almost forgotten Compton's Cafeteria
Speaker 1: riot story.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And the reason why it's significant that it's almost
Speaker 2: forgotten or it was forgotten for a while, that the
Speaker 2: Stone Wall Uprising, which was a really great episode we
Speaker 2: did on that too. That's considered like the watershed moment
Speaker 2: of gay rights in history, like the riot at the
Speaker 2: Stone Wall in that was it, that was what started
Speaker 2: it all. The thing is, when you think of things
Speaker 2: that way, it erases the stuff that came before that. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And one of the things that came before Stonewall was
Speaker 2: the Compton's Cafeteria riot in San Francisco in nineteen sixty six.
Speaker 2: And there wasn't a lot of difference between the two.
Speaker 2: It was based on. It was a reaction and a
Speaker 2: response to police harassment that had been building over the time.
Speaker 2: It was a multi racial group of LGBTQ people like
Speaker 2: fighting back against the police that spilled out into the streets.
Speaker 2: Like it, it bore a striking resemblance to Stonewall. And yet,
Speaker 2: like you said, there are reasons that we'll talk about
Speaker 2: that it was just pushed into the dustbin of history.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's very interesting. So as way of setting this up,
Speaker 1: we'll talk a little bit about the area at the
Speaker 1: time in San Francisco called the Tenderloin. This is in
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties. The Tenderloin has long had a reputation
Speaker 1: and even still does today in some ways. In the sixties,
Speaker 1: it was a place where you could go buy drugs
Speaker 1: or deal drugs. You could go do some illegal gambling,
Speaker 1: you could get involved in set sex work on either side.
Speaker 1: It was a neighborhood that didn't have a lot of money,
Speaker 1: and it was a neighborhood that attracted transience people that teenagers,
Speaker 1: namely who were either run out of their hometown because
Speaker 1: they were LGBTQ or maybe even run out of their
Speaker 1: family or maybe even run out of a different neighborhood
Speaker 1: in San Francisco to sort of collect in the Tenderloin
Speaker 1: where they could turn to sex work because they couldn't
Speaker 1: get other jobs, and they could turn to each other
Speaker 1: for support in community.
Speaker 2: Yeah, community developed of essentially what one of the people
Speaker 2: Susan Striker interviewed described as like the lowest drawing on
Speaker 2: the ladder of not just society of like including LGBTQ society.
Speaker 2: At the time, these were unhoused, teenage street trans people
Speaker 2: and like they had no rights, they had no respect
Speaker 2: from anybody, and yet they still came together and looked
Speaker 2: out for another, informed that community you were talking about.
Speaker 2: But they lived in really dire straits day to day,
Speaker 2: and yet they still formed that community. And the reason
Speaker 2: why they all kind of ended up in this the
Speaker 2: Tenderloin is because there was a few square block section
Speaker 2: of the Tenderloin that that was the only place they
Speaker 2: could live. And even there they got harassed. But like
Speaker 2: if they straight out of it, they were beaten. They
Speaker 2: were You couldn't leave that area if you were trans
Speaker 2: in San Francisco at the time, And I think Susan
Speaker 2: striker compared it to a ghetto, essentially that there was
Speaker 2: a trans ghetto in San Francisco in the sixties.
Speaker 1: That's right, and just the mirriad people that were interviewed
Speaker 1: from the time, it's clear that the cops basically could
Speaker 1: do whatever they wanted in there. They could arrest someone
Speaker 1: for quote unquote female impersonation. One was arrested. I believe
Speaker 1: Amanda Saint James, who was a transforman there ran a
Speaker 1: residential hotel, was arrested for obstructing the sidewalk I saw
Speaker 1: in this documentary that we're going to talk about later.
Speaker 1: You know, any kind of cross dressing or drag. They
Speaker 1: could arrest you for having the buttons on your shirt on.
Speaker 1: You know what they deemed the wrongs because you know,
Speaker 1: traditionally the buttons on like men and women's shirts and
Speaker 1: clothing is reversed. I never understood why was it to
Speaker 1: draw a distinction between the two when you're shopping.
Speaker 2: I think it's just to be difficult.
Speaker 1: It may be a short step at some point, but
Speaker 1: they would say like, oh no, your buttons are on
Speaker 1: the wrong side. You're impersonating a female, so let me
Speaker 1: crack your skull and throw you in a jail cell
Speaker 1: where you will be abused more and by fellow inmates
Speaker 1: and by the people who ran the jail.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And one of the reasons that this group of
Speaker 2: people were in such a pickle was not just because
Speaker 2: there was a small area of the world that they
Speaker 2: could leave. It's that they couldn't even work because they
Speaker 2: couldn't get id that reflected their gender, the gender they
Speaker 2: identified with. If they wanted to work as the gender
Speaker 2: they didn't identify with, they could just go back to
Speaker 2: their family that kicked them out in the first place.
Speaker 2: So to be themselves, to live as themselves is the
Speaker 2: way that they they they were who they were. They
Speaker 2: really really suffered and paid for it and were very poor.
Speaker 2: Resorted to sex work almost across the board unless you
Speaker 2: were really good at singing and dancing and you could
Speaker 2: make a living that way. And even those people who
Speaker 2: are successful at entertaining very frequently were stuck in that
Speaker 2: area of the tenderloin too. So it was a really
Speaker 2: it was a it was a tough position to be in.
Speaker 2: And I mean just the fact that they're like, well,
Speaker 2: if I want to be myself, it sucks that society
Speaker 2: treats me this way, but I'm going to be myself.
Speaker 2: You really have to respect that.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, totally. Within this community, there was a place
Speaker 1: called Compton's Cafeteria which provided a haven late at night.
Speaker 1: So it was at one oh one Taylor Street, right
Speaker 1: there in the Tenderloin, and it was a restaurant and
Speaker 1: it was one of quite a few in San Francisco.
Speaker 1: It is a small chain, local chain started up by
Speaker 1: a man named Gene Compton in the nineteen forties. This
Speaker 1: one opened in fifty four, and it became a gathering
Speaker 1: place for these people late at night who were unwelcomed
Speaker 1: even at gay bars. It was very centrally located. It
Speaker 1: was clean, it was open twenty four hours, it was
Speaker 1: well lit. It was a place where they could go
Speaker 1: and have coffee after you know, they got done with
Speaker 1: work or you know, doing whatever they were doing late
Speaker 1: at night. And what I really wanted more than anything
Speaker 1: when I was learning about the story was like I
Speaker 1: wanted to learn that Compton's Cafeteria was a bright spot
Speaker 1: in a haven where the owners would run the cops
Speaker 1: off and let these people do as they as they
Speaker 1: would and live in peace. Sadly, that was not the case.
Speaker 1: I didn't get the idea that they were just like
Speaker 1: completely unwelcome there. But they did call the cops here
Speaker 1: and there over you know, over the years, and like
Speaker 1: you know, the cops would come down there and run
Speaker 1: them out. So that was sort of a one discip
Speaker 1: pointing spot for me. But that's you know, that's what happened.
Speaker 1: So that's the way we have to report it.
Speaker 2: So the still I mean, even having to face that,
Speaker 2: like Compton's was the place you went to because like
Speaker 2: I was saying, like even in the LGBTQ community, the
Speaker 2: trans community and the Tenderloin were not well thought of,
Speaker 2: Like they couldn't even go into the gay bars in
Speaker 2: the Tenderloin. They were limited also and where they could go.
Speaker 2: But one of those places they could go was Compton's
Speaker 2: Cafeteria and go be themselves and like a real like
Speaker 2: you could check in on one another, you could give
Speaker 2: each other tips to like steer clear of this guy
Speaker 2: in this car kind of thing. It was despite the
Speaker 2: setbacks and drawbacks of going there, it was a place
Speaker 2: that they could go. Does that make sense?
Speaker 1: Yeah? And it was also a time, you know, we
Speaker 1: mentioned that they couldn't even go into certain gay bars.
Speaker 1: It was a time where the LGBTQ community was starting
Speaker 1: to organize a little bit, starting to kind of speak
Speaker 1: up a little bit for like the most basic rights
Speaker 1: you could imagine. And it was it was through the
Speaker 1: lens though, of what were called homophile organizations. One was
Speaker 1: called the Mattachine Society. These organizations where they were gay people,
Speaker 1: but they were like, hey, listen, I'm middle class, I
Speaker 1: have a great job, I am gay, and I just
Speaker 1: I just don't want to be harassed. So they they
Speaker 1: were organizing, but it wasn't like it wasn't like the
Speaker 1: kids on the streets, and they weren't They weren't rabbel rising,
Speaker 1: they weren't radical. In fact, within homophile organizations there were
Speaker 1: often disputes between some of the sort of you know,
Speaker 1: middle age more you know, not well healed, but sometimes
Speaker 1: well healed people sort of disagreeing with people in their
Speaker 1: own community. Some of these younger kids that were more radical,
Speaker 1: they're like, we don't even want you in our group anymore, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And those those homophile groups are they were the
Speaker 2: ones they had the connections to say the press or
Speaker 2: they had a working relationship with the police, department. They
Speaker 2: were trying to show the rest of society they were
Speaker 2: respectable people living respectable lives, and so being inclusive of
Speaker 2: unhoused teenagers who were also sex workers kind of it
Speaker 2: didn't really stand up to their argument. So they just
Speaker 2: pretended they weren't there. They excluded him, they kept him out.
Speaker 2: But what's cool is those same unhoused teenage trans sex
Speaker 2: workers they were like, well, we'll go organize ourselves. And
Speaker 2: they were really, really fortunate to have in the neighborhood.
Speaker 2: A couple of blocks away from Compton's a place called
Speaker 2: Glibe Memorial Methodist Church, probably one of the more progressive
Speaker 2: churches in the United States of all time. There was
Speaker 2: a reverend named Cecil Williams. He was a Civil rights
Speaker 2: movement VET and he was very much interested in supporting
Speaker 2: these trans kids who were just getting abused one way
Speaker 2: or another by every quarter of society, and he helped
Speaker 2: them organize. Actually they organized into an organization called Vanguard.
Speaker 1: That's right, and Ceca Williams is still alive. My friend,
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, he's ninety four years old.
Speaker 2: I saw footage of him preaching and he looked pretty cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So that church was there and like you said,
Speaker 1: just to have any formal organization on your side for
Speaker 1: these kids who are trying to radicalize the movement was
Speaker 1: a really really big deal. So Vanguard had formed in
Speaker 1: sixty five, and through the church and through Ceci Williams
Speaker 1: and Vanguard, they eventually would help get the Tenderloin recognized
Speaker 1: as a War on Poverty target district in May of
Speaker 1: sixty six. Usually when these districts were recognized, it was
Speaker 1: there were you know, impoverished communities, and usually racism was
Speaker 1: sort of at the core of what they were facing.
Speaker 1: But these kids basically stood up with Cecil Williams and
Speaker 1: they're like, well, no, it's we're suffering the same way,
Speaker 1: and so we should be recognized thusly, and they were
Speaker 1: in May of nineteen sixty six.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was a big deal to get those kind
Speaker 2: of grants, and that ended up there was like a
Speaker 2: center for the kids living on the street. There was
Speaker 2: a van that doled out medical services like it had
Speaker 2: a pretty good effect, as we'll see. Yeah, so you
Speaker 2: said that there were times when Compton's Cafeteria would call
Speaker 2: the police on their patrons, their trans patrons. Apparently that
Speaker 2: really picked up after Vanguard. It became clear that these
Speaker 2: trans kids weren't just like keeping to themselves as much
Speaker 2: as they could, that they were starting to have a
Speaker 2: little bit of self respect, that they were organizing, that
Speaker 2: they were getting political. That's apparently when it really started
Speaker 2: to step up and the vanguard I think at one
Speaker 2: point picketed outside of Comptons. That was one of the
Speaker 2: things that they did. And that was a month or
Speaker 2: so before the riot happened. So you've got these trans
Speaker 2: kids organizing, starting to have like a certain amount of
Speaker 2: self esteem and self respect that's coming out of their community,
Speaker 2: and that that usually leads to pushback from establishment, and
Speaker 2: that's what happened.
Speaker 1: That sounds like a great place for a break, my friend,
Speaker 1: Thank you all right? Well, Josh sat it up perfectly
Speaker 1: and will be right back to knock him down right
Speaker 1: after this. I know why a bowling analogy happened just there,
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: But it was great. I love your sports metaphors.
Speaker 1: Is bowling a sport?
Speaker 2: Sure?
Speaker 1: Oh boy, I'm gonna get in trouble for.
Speaker 2: That, Yes you are, I said, sure, everybody.
Speaker 1: So this is how lost to time the Compton Cafeteria
Speaker 1: riot has been is they're not even positive. Still what
Speaker 1: the exact date was, Yeah, Striker did a lot of
Speaker 1: research Susan Striker, who we mentioned and who will talk
Speaker 1: a lot more about in this segment. Eventually Striker narrowed
Speaker 1: it down to August twenty seventh, which was a Saturday,
Speaker 1: the last Saturday of that month. But we can safely
Speaker 1: say it was in August of nineteen sixty six, probably
Speaker 1: late August, very early in the morning, as in Saturday
Speaker 1: leading into Sunday. And the story is a lot like
Speaker 1: like you said, it's a lot like Stonewall. The police
Speaker 1: get called in because things are kind of rowdy. The
Speaker 1: police get there, start being very physically aggressive with these people,
Speaker 1: and then one of them through coffee in one of
Speaker 1: the cop faces, and it was on. After that, Basically
Speaker 1: it went downhill pretty fast. Other patrons joined in, the
Speaker 1: cops started fighting back. The cops eventually go outside and retreat,
Speaker 1: wait for reinforcements. The management, you know, close the place up,
Speaker 1: and the people inside started breaking the windows, They started
Speaker 1: trashing the place, they flipped the tables over, they started
Speaker 1: wrecking it, and you know, the cops showed on, showed
Speaker 1: up en mass to deal with about sixty people or
Speaker 1: so that fought the police with their purses and throwing
Speaker 1: high heels, and I think they destroyed a police car
Speaker 1: by the end of the night and set a news
Speaker 1: stand on fire.
Speaker 2: I saw potentially hundreds of people, like the nearby hotels
Speaker 2: like drained, the bars drained, like it went. It got serious,
Speaker 2: like after they left Compton's.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so unsurprisingly some of them were successfully arrested and
Speaker 1: taking to jail, and Compton's, you know, for their part,
Speaker 1: basically said from now on, you know, they called them,
Speaker 1: you know, drag queen patrons at the time said you're
Speaker 1: not allowed here anymore, no more gay hustlers. Apparently there
Speaker 1: were there were pickets after that, Like the ensuing days
Speaker 1: were kind of a mess. They would some people would
Speaker 1: still go down and picket. They wouldn't be allowed in
Speaker 1: the restaurant. They started closing at midnight instead of being
Speaker 1: twenty four to seven and just closed I think like
Speaker 1: five years after that permanently.
Speaker 2: Yes, but they they it had immediate effects. First of all,
Speaker 2: it took that kind of sense of organizing among the
Speaker 2: trans kids in the Tenderloin. It like bolstered it. It
Speaker 2: gave them like a feeling like, oh, we actually can
Speaker 2: make things happen together, even if it was violent in
Speaker 2: the face of police violence. And apparently it had an
Speaker 2: effect that they the police kind of stopped so casually
Speaker 2: harassing or beating or even kidnapping the trans kids in
Speaker 2: the Tenderloin after that, immediately after that, there was an
Speaker 2: immediate effect.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. They ended up having an ally in,
Speaker 1: a community relations cop named Elliott Blackstone, who basically was like,
Speaker 1: you know, I would like to help you folks out.
Speaker 1: I'm going to advocate for an end to these anti
Speaker 1: cross dressing laws. You won't get harassed for dressing how
Speaker 1: you want to dress. I'm going to help you get
Speaker 1: the services that you need. Eventually, a public health unit
Speaker 1: called the Center for Special Problems started offering their support
Speaker 1: as well, including getting IDs that reflected their gender identities,
Speaker 1: which is what you were talking about. That kept a
Speaker 1: lot of them from getting jobs, and that allowed many
Speaker 1: of them to go get legal work, and you know,
Speaker 1: they could leave sex work behind.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it had a significant impact, especially considering
Speaker 2: that it was forgotten really quickly after that. That was
Speaker 2: also given credit for establishing the National Transsexual Counseling Unit,
Speaker 2: which is a support group for trans people, probably the
Speaker 2: first one in history, and it was a place where like,
Speaker 2: if you needed a place to stay, they could tell
Speaker 2: you who to go ask. They could help you fill
Speaker 2: out applications for hormones and tell you what doctor to
Speaker 2: go to. It was a mail drop for some people
Speaker 2: who had just showed up and didn't have a place
Speaker 2: to live yet. Like basically everything that supported unhoused trans
Speaker 2: kids in Tenderloin. In the Tenderloin in the late sixties,
Speaker 2: the Canceling Unit did. And again this Compton's Cafeteria riot
Speaker 2: is directly responsible for not just saying like, hey, we
Speaker 2: have these needs that are being completely unmet, where the
Speaker 2: police are beating us with impunity anytime they feel like it.
Speaker 2: I read. I read one story where this kid had
Speaker 2: just shown up to San Francisco and one of the
Speaker 2: first things he's was another kid laying on the street
Speaker 2: in agony saying his ribs were broken. And the kid
Speaker 2: who'd just got into San Francisco was like, well, we
Speaker 2: got to call the police, and the kid with his
Speaker 2: rib broken said, the police are the ones that did
Speaker 2: this to me. And that guy, I think he was
Speaker 2: one of the vanguard founders. He's like that just crystallized
Speaker 2: the situation for him almost immediately, but in responding to
Speaker 2: that with violence. It's sad that it took violence, but
Speaker 2: they finally stood up and said, no, we're done putting
Speaker 2: up with this, and that actually had a positive impact
Speaker 2: in drawing attention to their needs and then getting the
Speaker 2: city to start responding to those things at the very
Speaker 2: least recognizing that they exist.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, boy, it would be a kettle of fire
Speaker 1: as an episode. But I wonder if one day we
Speaker 1: could tackle protests, nonviolent and violent protests, okay, through the years,
Speaker 1: because it is a fraught topic.
Speaker 2: Supposedly. I don't know where I saw this, but I
Speaker 2: think I just saw it today. Something like fifty nine
Speaker 2: percent of nonviolent organizations are non violent movements succeed in
Speaker 2: their goals, but only like a quarter of violent movements too.
Speaker 2: So usually you want to back the non violent ones
Speaker 2: is if you're betting on it, if you're betting on
Speaker 2: outcomes of civil movements.
Speaker 1: So we mentioned forgetting about the riot and how that
Speaker 1: could happen in nineteen sixty six, not even that long
Speaker 1: ago relatively speaking, historically speaking, I guess I should say,
Speaker 1: and how does that happen? And here's how that happens.
Speaker 1: No one really wrote about it, even in San Francisco.
Speaker 1: The straight quote unquote straight publications didn't write about it,
Speaker 1: and largely the gay publications didn't even write about it much.
Speaker 1: I believe there were a couple of members of the
Speaker 1: local gay community who wrote about it. A gentleman named
Speaker 1: Raymond brush Here wrote about it in the nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: two so this is five years later.
Speaker 2: He was a local, very very radical reverend who was
Speaker 2: also gay. I think he was a Vanguard founder too.
Speaker 1: So he wrote about it in the nineteen seventy two
Speaker 1: Gay Pride program, so just in a program for a
Speaker 1: Gay Pride event. And then a drag queen at the
Speaker 1: time named Sandy Green mentioned it, just mention it in
Speaker 1: a letter to the editor. Again, this is six years later.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, five years later, I guess seven years Wow,
Speaker 1: we got pretty bad the seventy three issue of Gay
Speaker 1: Pride Quarterly. But it was not It wasn't even remembered
Speaker 1: in the LGBTQ community in San Francisco, forget about the
Speaker 1: rest of San Francisco or America at large. And the
Speaker 1: question is like, why did own wall become the thing?
Speaker 1: And there's a few reasons. One is that it was
Speaker 1: in New York and it was the center of publishing,
Speaker 1: so that certainly didn't hurt a bit and media. Another
Speaker 1: is that these homophile groups that we talked about in
Speaker 1: that kind of short three year span from sixty six
Speaker 1: to sixty nine started to model themselves a little bit
Speaker 1: more after things like the Black Power movement and the
Speaker 1: woman's rights movement, and we're a little more sort of
Speaker 1: activist and action oriented than they were before when they
Speaker 1: were just in sixty six saying like, you know, can
Speaker 1: we just have rights like everyone else? Get a little
Speaker 1: more aggressive.
Speaker 2: And I saw it put in that there was more kindling,
Speaker 2: Like they were just starting to bring the kindling out
Speaker 2: at the time of the Compton riots, but by the
Speaker 2: time Stonewall happened, there's a lot more kindling to go.
Speaker 1: Up, totally okay, And that's you know, that's another really
Speaker 1: big reason.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's pretty pretty interesting stuff. Also, I think the
Speaker 2: fact that like it was almost purposefully, if not purposefully
Speaker 2: ignored or just kind of relegated to the sidelines by
Speaker 2: the larger LGBTQ community in San Francisco, because you know,
Speaker 2: it was a riot and that really again doesn't jibe
Speaker 2: with the idea that hey, we're just respectable, middle class
Speaker 2: Americans who want to live a quiet, respectable life and
Speaker 2: be left alone. Rioting doesn't really kind of coincide with that.
Speaker 2: So when you put all those things together, it definitely
Speaker 2: makes sense that the Compton's Cafeteria riot kind of was
Speaker 2: lost to history. And the fact that it was written
Speaker 2: about in just two places or it was mentioned directly
Speaker 2: is really significant. Like it really underscores what Susan Striker
Speaker 2: did when she came up with the I guess the
Speaker 2: detective work of putting the whole thing together.
Speaker 1: I think that's another great spot for a break.
Speaker 2: Oh man, I didn't even mean to do that. You're
Speaker 2: just so good.
Speaker 3: We'll be right back everybody.
Speaker 2: So, back in I think the early nineties, maybe even
Speaker 2: ninety one, Susan Striker was she was wrapping up her PhD.
Speaker 2: At UC Berkeley. She was a trained historian. At the
Speaker 2: same time, she was also transitioning to a woman, and
Speaker 2: this is nineteen ninety one, so she's basically like, I
Speaker 2: might as well not even apply for jobs in academia
Speaker 2: because I'm not going to get one because I'm trans
Speaker 2: so instead she started volunteering. She wanted to put her
Speaker 2: historian chops to work, and she decided to volunteer at
Speaker 2: the Gay and Lesbian Historical Society in San Francisco and
Speaker 2: the Castro And it was there that I think she
Speaker 2: first came across that nineteen seventy two Gay Pride Parade
Speaker 2: program that Ray bro Shears wrote that mentioned the Compton's riot,
Speaker 2: and she's like, what is this guy even talking about
Speaker 2: six years later? I think I said, four eight ninety.
Speaker 1: Two just terrible. Yeah, And you know, when you see
Speaker 1: this documentary that I promised you were about to name it,
Speaker 1: you can like Susan Striker is struck by the fact that,
Speaker 1: like she was just like I couldn't believe what I
Speaker 1: was reading, almost like how did I not know about this?
Speaker 1: Like I'm an active member of this community and everyone
Speaker 1: knows about Stonewall, Like, how did I not even know this?
Speaker 2: Well? She questioned that it might not have even been
Speaker 2: a thing, or if it was a thing, that Bruce
Speaker 2: Ears was maybe blowing it up out of proportion.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but you know, if you know, obviously way pre Internet,
Speaker 1: there's traditional media, and if traditional media didn't cover it
Speaker 1: at all, the only thing you're left with is people
Speaker 1: in oral history. So that's what Striker did. She at
Speaker 1: first tried to go to the city archive is to look
Speaker 1: for police records and arrest records, and the archives said,
Speaker 1: you know, in the sixteen seventies they basically shredded and
Speaker 1: burned a lot of stuff because of police misconduct, so
Speaker 1: we don't have anything for that period or that event
Speaker 1: at least, And so Susan Striker was like, all right,
Speaker 1: I guess I got to start finding people, like literal
Speaker 1: humans who were either there or were nearby and knew
Speaker 1: about it firsthand. And that was really hard to do.
Speaker 1: I mean, all of a sudden, it's like real detective
Speaker 1: work going on because Susan Striker is having to track
Speaker 1: these people down, these people that were living on the margins,
Speaker 1: you know, fifty years ago I guess at the time
Speaker 1: about forty years ago. So oh no, lessen that thirty
Speaker 1: something years. I'm trying to think something like that. And
Speaker 1: there were there are plenty of different stories, like in
Speaker 1: one story, she found a trans woman who was a
Speaker 1: cook at Compton's but was put in a men's prison,
Speaker 1: was not allowed in interview, and ended up dying before
Speaker 1: Susan Striker could speak to her, she thought about writing
Speaker 1: a book and ultimately said, you know what I think
Speaker 1: this should be. It'll get to more people if I
Speaker 1: make a documentary out of this. So at long last,
Speaker 1: we can say that the name of the documentary that
Speaker 1: Susan Striker along with Victor Silverman made was called Screaming
Speaker 1: Queen's colon the Riot at Compton's Cafeteria in two thousand
Speaker 1: and five, which I watched on YouTube. That's great in
Speaker 1: full under an hour's like fifty five fifty six minutes,
Speaker 1: but it's also dramatized, which I have not seen, but
Speaker 1: I'm going to check it out tonight. And Netflix's showed
Speaker 1: Tales of the City in twenty nineteen that I believe
Speaker 1: Elliott Page stars in.
Speaker 2: Oh, is that right?
Speaker 1: I think I saw Elliott Page in the cast, but
Speaker 1: I didn't dive too deeply yet.
Speaker 2: So there's an Unsung History podcast episode that interviews Susan
Speaker 2: Striker and that she kind of goes into detail about
Speaker 2: putting this whole history together and it's kind of thrilling actually,
Speaker 2: Like it turns out one of her cohorts at the
Speaker 2: Gain Lesbian Historical Society was a geographer and helped put
Speaker 2: the like create a map of this vanished area in
Speaker 2: the tender Loin together, so she started to have like visual,
Speaker 2: like a visual idea of where these things were happening.
Speaker 2: And when she was able to finally talk to people
Speaker 2: who were there, she knew that this thing actually had happened,
Speaker 2: because she didn't she didn't say, hey, here's all the
Speaker 2: stuff I found out. Is this right? She was like,
Speaker 2: have you ever heard of this? And then they would
Speaker 2: give her all the same information that she already had.
Speaker 2: She knew that she was definitely onto something. So it's
Speaker 2: definitely worth checking out. It's a great, great episode. And
Speaker 2: definitely watched Screaming Queen's too. And the name I think
Speaker 2: Chuck was in that there's an initial newsreel about the
Speaker 2: tenderloin the red light district down there. Yeah, and they
Speaker 2: mentioned how Compton's Cafeteria recently had to start closing at
Speaker 2: midnight and they chalked it up to a sidewalk fight
Speaker 2: between screaming queens as how they put it like they
Speaker 2: just basically made it sound like it was a cat
Speaker 2: fight that got out of hand. The police weren't even involved. Wow,
Speaker 2: And and That's how they explained how Compton started closing
Speaker 2: at midnight. So even then, like this is an old newsreel,
Speaker 2: even when like right after it happened, it was being ignored.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like yeah, that's really hard to believe, but also
Speaker 1: easy to believe in some ways, sadly, So these days
Speaker 1: you can you can still go over to one on
Speaker 1: one Taylor Street. That building is still there. It is
Speaker 1: obviously not the restaurant any longer. It is still a
Speaker 1: home for many trans people, and the tenderloin itself is
Speaker 1: still still has that sort of that sort of spirit
Speaker 1: and undercurrent there people are. You know, it's sort of
Speaker 1: how San Francisco is treated. Both this area and this
Speaker 1: riot is really interesting for a progressive city because they
Speaker 1: haven't done the right thing in many cases over the years.
Speaker 1: Some people have tried. In twenty fifteen, there was a
Speaker 1: developer name called Group I that proposed building a hotel
Speaker 1: and retail project there with a nonprofit space a couple
Speaker 1: of blocks away from the location at Compton's, and you know,
Speaker 1: different people were on board and then like within the
Speaker 1: gay community and then we're like, no, I don't think
Speaker 1: we should do this here because it's a historical area
Speaker 1: and we should just preserve it as that. And I
Speaker 1: think that's just sort of like a lot of people
Speaker 1: are fighting back against that in general in San Francisco
Speaker 1: kind of no matter what the cause.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. So they finally, I guess they went
Speaker 2: along with it, or it just was going to happen
Speaker 2: one way or another, but they got some concessions out
Speaker 2: of the developer and the city, and one of the
Speaker 2: things that was that came out of it was that
Speaker 2: the area Taylor Street that Compton's Cafeteria used to be along,
Speaker 2: they renamed it Gene Compton's Cafeteria Way. And at first
Speaker 2: everybody was like, Okay, that's a compromise because we wanted
Speaker 2: it called Compton's Cafeteria Riot I guess way, and the
Speaker 2: city was like, no, we're not putting Riot on an
Speaker 2: actual official street sign. So they said, well, we'll call
Speaker 2: it Gene Compton's Cafeteria Way. And then later on they're like, no, actually,
Speaker 2: that's a terrible name for it because it commemorates one
Speaker 2: of the people who was anti trance, who like got us,
Speaker 2: who kicked us out of his cafeteria routinely. Why would
Speaker 2: we want to commemorate him. We wanted to commemorate this
Speaker 2: uprising instead, and they finally changed it to what did
Speaker 2: they change.
Speaker 1: It to, Well, they dropped the name Compton's because they
Speaker 1: didn't want to honor someone who they said, you know,
Speaker 1: would frequently call the cops on them.
Speaker 2: Right, So, I can't remember what they named it. I
Speaker 2: think it might be like trans under Corridor Way or
Speaker 2: something like that. And the reason why is because there's
Speaker 2: a transgender cultural district there now. And do you remember
Speaker 2: our colleague, she was a trans woman, Raquel Willis.
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, sure.
Speaker 2: I read an article about this new cultural district that
Speaker 2: she wrote in I Think Out magazine. It's pretty good.
Speaker 2: That's yeah, it was great too. So it's probably the
Speaker 2: first transgender cultural district in the entire world, and it's
Speaker 2: very appropriately in the Tenderloin because this is like kind
Speaker 2: of like where a lot of the ground zero was
Speaker 2: for the trans community in America. And this this cultural
Speaker 2: district has like a I think an entrepreneurial incubator. It
Speaker 2: helps people looking for housing and jobs. It's it's everything
Speaker 2: that you would kind of want as a start for
Speaker 2: a community that's just now starting to have its needs met.
Speaker 3: That's great.
Speaker 2: I think so too.
Speaker 1: What if when they when the city said, oh we
Speaker 1: can't have the name right on a street sign, what
Speaker 1: if they were like, what about quiet right boulevard on
Speaker 1: Russian Hill? You're awfully quiet about that one.
Speaker 2: Is there really a quiet right boulevard? I got you
Speaker 2: for okay, and the fact that you placed it in
Speaker 2: Russian Hill is what got me. That was well done. Oh,
Speaker 2: thank you, very well done.
Speaker 1: All right?
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, if you want to know more about the
Speaker 2: Comptence CAF tier, you're right. Definitely go watch Screaming Queens
Speaker 2: and go listen to that episode of Unsung History. And
Speaker 2: thanks a lot, Gigi for the idea, great one, And
Speaker 2: since I thank gg, that means it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know that makes the overall gullible score
Speaker 1: Josh four hundred and sixty three. Chuck one.
Speaker 2: Hey, at least it's not a big goose egg for you.
Speaker 1: I got points on the board.
Speaker 2: That was a sports metaphor, right.
Speaker 1: That's right, followed by a following a quiet riot shout,
Speaker 1: which is probably not something you expected to hear in
Speaker 1: this podcast.
Speaker 2: No, but they hold up.
Speaker 1: All right, I'm gonna call this Handburger. Then, quite frankly,
Speaker 1: the only reason I'm reading it is because of that word,
Speaker 1: because I think it's hysterical what this guy says. This
Speaker 1: from Danny. Hey, guys, just finish to the latest episode,
Speaker 1: and the listener mail Sam mentioned he was hesitant to
Speaker 1: try the show because the title of the show sounded condescending,
Speaker 1: as if it was suggesting that he should already know
Speaker 1: certain things at this point in his life. I've heard
Speaker 1: you mention this about other people. It always cracks me up,
Speaker 1: because that's exactly why I started listening. It started about
Speaker 1: seven years ago. The person I was dating at the
Speaker 1: time would constantly hooke fun and belittle me for not
Speaker 1: knowing certain things. So one day I, huh, that's abuse.
Speaker 1: It is abuse. So one day I literally typed stuff
Speaker 1: you should know into Google, hoping to find a list
Speaker 1: of things that I ought to know. Awesome, true story
Speaker 1: is what this guy says. What I found instead, Thank God,
Speaker 1: was your show. Admittedly, it took me a while to
Speaker 1: realize you two weren't simply performing a public service to
Speaker 1: the world informing idiot boyfriends of their obvious knowledge gaps
Speaker 1: and remedying the situation. It probably wasn't until the Jackhammer's
Speaker 1: episode that I asked myself, should I really know this?
Speaker 2: That's an abuse too?
Speaker 1: That it's Danny. Uh. This is the best part though,
Speaker 1: needless to say, but I'm gonna say it anyways. The
Speaker 1: relationship did not work out. What I learned, though, is
Speaker 1: that everyone has some knowledge gaps. So what if I
Speaker 1: thought it was a handburger rather than a hamburger.
Speaker 2: I think that's important.
Speaker 1: There's no ham and you eat it with your hands.
Speaker 1: That's what Danny says.
Speaker 2: It makes sense, but everyone else calls it a hamburger
Speaker 2: so or a steam tam is steamedam right?
Speaker 1: I'm only going to call them handburgers from now on, though.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because it makes a really love peace for why
Speaker 2: you would call it a handburger.
Speaker 1: Or that I didn't know IV stood for intravenous? What
Speaker 1: am I a doctor who gives a rip?
Speaker 2: I like Danny.
Speaker 1: All that to say, thanks for doing what you do, guys,
Speaker 1: for teaching me stuff I want to know, as well
Speaker 1: as some things I probably should know. Keep it up
Speaker 1: until the bitter end, Danny.
Speaker 2: Thanks a lot, Danny, that was an excellent email and
Speaker 2: we're glad that you're on board.
Speaker 1: I wonder what Danny thought i'veys did for I don't know,
Speaker 1: or if it was like ivy or something. Right, He's
Speaker 1: like four, like, why are you gonna put ivy in
Speaker 1: my arm?
Speaker 2: Uh? Where was I? Oh? Yeah? If you want to
Speaker 2: be like Danny and send us a rock and email,
Speaker 2: we would love to hear from you, wrap it up,
Speaker 2: spank it on the bottom, send it off to stuff
Speaker 2: podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
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Speaker 1: your favorite shows.