(Daily Beast) – The creation of Compton’s Transgender Cultural District is to stop the displacement of trans people from a place they were traditionally welcomed in, and to teach trans history. Honey Mahogany walked down 6th Street in San Francisco, pointing to single room occupancy hotels, the dance and performance space Counterpulse, and gay bars, OMG and Aunt Charlie’s Lounge. She passed by the Golden Gate Theatre where A Bronx Tale was playing and came to site of the former all-night diner,
Gene’s Compton Cafeteria (now transitional housing), where in August 1966 a trans woman threw a cup of coffee at a police officer trying to arrest her, which turned into a riot with trans people fighting back against police harassment, flipping over tables and throwing cutlery. This event, detailed in Susan Stryker and Victor Silverman’s documentary, Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton’s Cafeteria, happened three years before the famous uprising at the Stonewall Inn in New York’s Greenwich Village. READ MORE
