Three years before the riots at Stonewall, the LGBTQ community of San Francisco's Tenderloin rose up. And the story was almost lost to time. Learn how and why today.
# Summary
In this overlooked history episode, Josh and Chuck explore the almost-forgotten Compton's Cafeteria Riot of 1966 in San Francisco's Tenderloin district, a pivotal uprising by trans and homeless LGBTQ youth that predated the more famous Stonewall riots by three years. The episode reveals how historian Susan Stryker painstakingly reconstructed this lost history through detective work and oral interviews, interviewing survivors and combing through fragments of records after official archives had been destroyed, ultimately creating the documentary Screaming Queens. The hosts discuss how marginalized trans sex workers in the Tenderloin faced constant police harassment and were unwelcome even in gay bars, but found community at Compton's Cafeteria until a police raid sparked a spontaneous riot that actually led to real improvements in their lives, including access to gender-affirming IDs and social services—yet this groundbreaking moment was erased from history because mainstream media ignored it and middle-class gay organizations distanced themselves from it.
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