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Great Wall Institute: The Process of the Great Wall of Los Angeles

1959 Cooper Do-nuts Protest

Predating the Stonewall Riots by ten years, Cooper Do-nuts was the site of a 1959 protest against the LAPD's harassment of the gay and transgender clientele frequenting the shop. Due to Cooper Do-nuts' proximity to several gay and lesbian establishments, a case of resisting arrest evolved into a full-scale riot that is remembered as the first open act of LGBTQ resistance toward police abuse in the United States. BY CHRISTIANA LILLY: "the Los Angeles Police Department often targeted LGBT people through entrapment, intimidation, and violence. Police specifically targeted trans people, arresting those whose perceived gender did not match their driver’s license. Several gay bars, in an attempt to remain inconspicuous and avoid police raids, banned or discouraged transgender people from entering. However, Cooper’s Donuts, which opened in 1959 in the Skid Row neighborhood, was welcoming to the transgender community. The shop served policemen during the day and, as the patrols dwindled in the evening, opened its doors to trans people and those barred from other establishments."-

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1. 1959 Cooper Do-nuts "Predating the Stonewall Riots by ten years, Cooper Do-nuts was the site of a 1959 protest against the LAPD's harrassment of the gay and transgender clientele frequenting the shop. Due to Cooper&Do-nuts' proximity to several gay and lesbian establishments, a case of resisting arrest evolved into a full-scale riot that is remembered as the first open act of LGBTQ resistance toward police abuse in the United States."
2. 1959 Cooper Do-nuts Protest Predating the Stonewall Riots by ten years, Cooper Do-nuts was the site of a 1959 protest against the LAPD's harassment of the gay and transgender clientele frequenting the shop. Due to Cooper Do-nuts' proximity to several gay and lesbian establishments, a case of resisting arrest evolved into a full-scale riot that is remembered as the first open act of LGBTQ resistance toward police abuse in the United States. BY CHRISTIANA LILLY: "the Los Angeles Police Department often targeted LGBT people through entrapment, intimidation, and violence. Police specifically targeted trans people, arresting those whose perceived gender did not match their driver’s license. Several gay bars, in an attempt to remain inconspicuous and avoid police raids, banned or discouraged transgender people from entering. However, Cooper’s Donuts, which opened in 1959 in the Skid Row neighborhood, was welcoming to the transgender community. The shop served policemen during the day and, as the patrols dwindled in the evening, opened its doors to trans people and those barred from other establishments."-
3. Cooper’s Do-nuts "...Cooper’s Do-Nuts uprising right here in Los Angeles. Main Street was a popular hub for LGBTQ+ people, and Cooper’s Do-Nuts was a 24 hour welcoming space for trans folx in a city that otherwise targeted those who had IDs and driver’s licenses with gender markers that didn’t match their gender presentations. The fact that Cooper’s was a space where trans women, drag queens, and gender diverse people could congregate, made it a target for police and arrests.LA law at the time dictated that if your gender presentation did not match the gender on your ID you would be taken to jail and LGBTQ people were subject to campaigns of entrapment, intimidation and violence. As a result, many gay bars banned or actively discouraged trans and/or visibly gender diverse people from attending in order to avoid attracting attention and being targeted by raids. There were rules that you must wear at least three items of clothing that match your legal gender.One evening in May of 1959, the police attempted to arrest several patrons including two drag queens, two male sex workers and a gay man. As those arrested attempted to fight back, protesting their unjust arrest onlookers from Cooper’s Do-Nuts decided enough was enough, and a group consisting of transwomen, lesbians, drag queens and gay men, spilled out onto the street in support and threw coffee cups, donuts and trash at the police until they were forced to retreat without their detainees. Backup was called and a night of rioting ensued. That night is widely considered to be the first gay uprising in modern history, seven years before the Black Cat Riot in L.A.’s Silverlake neighborhood, and ten years before the Stonewall Rebellion." - by William Grant Still Arts Center
4. LA Cooper Do-nuts Riots Revolution 10 years prior to Stonewall "the Los Angeles Police Department often targeted LGBT people through entrapment, intimidation, and violence. Police specifically targeted trans people, arresting those whose perceived gender did not match their driver’s license. Several gay bars, in an attempt to remain inconspicuous and avoid police raids, banned or discouraged transgender people from entering. However, Cooper’s Donuts, which opened in 1959 in the Skid Row neighborhood, was welcoming to the transgender community. The shop served policemen during the day and, as the patrols dwindled in the evening, opened its doors to trans people and those barred from other establishments. One evening, two police officers asked for ID cards from some customers at the shop — a typical way for them to harass LGBT people. Those who were picked out of the crowd, including John Rechy, an accomplished gay author who has written about the uprising, were “two hustlers, two queens and a young man just cruising.” Something snapped in one of them; enough was enough. He objected to the car being packed with five people and fought back, leading the customers at the donut shop to flood into the streets, throwing coffee cups, trash, spoons, donuts, anything they could get their hands on. “[The officers] fled into their car,” Rechy writes, “called backups and soon the street was bustling with disobedience. Gay people danced about the cars.” The officers returned with reinforcements, Main Street was closed, and history was made. However, the importance of the Cooper’s Donuts uprising was not recognized until much later. Mark Thompson, a social historian who lived in the same neighborhood as Rechy, writes of the event’s importance: “I would not describe it as a riot but more like an isolated patch of local social unrest that had lasting repercussions. I think less in its day, more as a lesson for us today. L.A. is such a huge, sprawling city (even back then) so what happened in one district probably did not register elsewhere — especially when issues of class and race are factored in.” Not too much is known about the uprising at Cooper’s Donuts, and as time passes, fewer of the storytellers of the time are around to share their experiences. But it is important to remember that the fight for LGBT rights was not limited to one city and one event. The Cooper’s Donuts uprising, like the Compton Cafeteria riots, the Dewey’s sit-ins, and the Independence Hall protests, helped pave the way for Stonewall and for all the victories the community has seen since." - Christiana Lilly
5. Cooper Do-nuts "The Cooper Donut Riots Althought the facts vary, and the mere existance of an uprising has come into question, the narrative of the Cooper Do-nuts Riot stands is as follows: The Cooper Do-nuts Riot was a response to the routine harassment of LGBTQ people by the police in Los Angeles in the late 1950s. The uprising began when two police officers attempted to arrest two drag queens, two male sex workers, and a gay man. One of those arrested protested the lack of room in the police car and onlookers began throwing assorted coffee, donuts, cups, and trash at the police until they fled in their car without making the arrests. People then took to rioting in the streets and police backup arrived blocking off the street for the entire night and arresting several people. The Cooper Do-nuts uprising is often believed to be the first gay uprising in the United States. Although these events are little remembered today, they contextualize the fight for LGBTQ rights and remind us that this struggle was not limited to one city or even one event. The Cooper Do-nuts riot and many other events helped pave the way for Stonewall and for all of the victories since. It stands to reason that each individual will have to determin for themselves, given the facts we have to date, whether or not the uprising itself even occurred. And only time will tell what truly lands in the history books. "

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3. 1959 Cooper Do-nuts Protest Predating the Stonewall Riots by ten years, Cooper Do-nuts was the site of a 1959 protest against the LAPD's harassment of the gay and transgender clientele frequenting the shop. Due to Cooper Do-nuts' proximity to several gay and lesbian establishments, a case of resisting arrest evolved into a full-scale riot that is remembered as the first open act of LGBTQ resistance toward police abuse in the United States. BY CHRISTIANA LILLY: "the Los Angeles Police Department often targeted LGBT people through entrapment, intimidation, and violence. Police specifically targeted trans people, arresting those whose perceived gender did not match their driver’s license. Several gay bars, in an attempt to remain inconspicuous and avoid police raids, banned or discouraged transgender people from entering. However, Cooper’s Donuts, which opened in 1959 in the Skid Row neighborhood, was welcoming to the transgender community. The shop served policemen during the day and, as the patrols dwindled in the evening, opened its doors to trans people and those barred from other establishments."-
5. Jim Lawson Nonviolent Civil Rights Workshops Simulating Violent Reactions im Lawson, pioneering expert on nonviolence and teacher to Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and John Lewis, led civil rights workshops simulating violent reactions of white people at lunch counters. This was to train the nonviolent resisters not to react with violence. Lawson also discusses the importance of discipline in nonviolent movements: "You cannot go on a demonstration with 25 people doing whatever they want to do. They have to have a common discipline… The difficulty with nonviolent people and efforts is that they don’t recognize the necessity of fierce discipline and training, and strategizing, and planning, and recruiting, and doing the kind of things you do to have a movement. That can’t happen spontaneously. It has to be done systematically." Lawson is the voice in the video, the facilitator of the workshop, and the person interviewed at the end. This clip taken from "A Force More Powerful", an excellent documentary on the history of nonviolent movements, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpBoH....
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2. 1977 Harvey Milk - The Gay Rights Movement
4. 1959 Cooper Do-nuts Protest Predating the Stonewall Riots by ten years, Cooper Do-nuts was the site of a 1959 protest against the LAPD's harassment of the gay and transgender clientele frequenting the shop. Due to Cooper Do-nuts' proximity to several gay and lesbian establishments, a case of resisting arrest evolved into a full-scale riot that is remembered as the first open act of LGBTQ resistance toward police abuse in the United States. BY CHRISTIANA LILLY: "the Los Angeles Police Department often targeted LGBT people through entrapment, intimidation, and violence. Police specifically targeted trans people, arresting those whose perceived gender did not match their driver’s license. Several gay bars, in an attempt to remain inconspicuous and avoid police raids, banned or discouraged transgender people from entering. However, Cooper’s Donuts, which opened in 1959 in the Skid Row neighborhood, was welcoming to the transgender community. The shop served policemen during the day and, as the patrols dwindled in the evening, opened its doors to trans people and those barred from other establishments."-
6. "Sip-in" a twist on the “sit-in” protests 1966 In 1966, members of the Mattachine Society in New York City staged a “sip-in”—a twist on the “sit-in” protests of the 1960s—in which they visited taverns, declared themselves gay, and waited to be turned away so they could sue. They were denied service at the Greenwich Village tavern Julius, resulting in much publicity and the quick reversal of the anti-gay liquor laws. On an afternoon in the spring of 1966, at the corner of 10th Street and Waverly Place in Greenwich Village, three men set out to disrupt the political and social climate of New York City. After having gone from one bar to the next, the men reached Julius’, a cozy tavern with a bar opposite a small grill and an isolated space in the back. They approached the bartender, proclaimed they were gay and then requested a drink—and were promptly denied service. The trio had accomplished their goal; their “Sip-In” had begun. The men, who were part of the Mattachine Society—an early organization dedicated to fighting for gay rights—wanted to demonstrate that bars in the city discriminated against LGBTQ people. The practice of refusing service to gay people in bars was common at the time, although it was more veiled than discriminatory legislation like Jim Crow laws in the South that forced racial segregation.
7. 1970 First LA Pride Parade The first L.A. Pride Parade (originally Gay Pride Parade), organized by Rev. Bob Humphries (founder, United States Mission), Morris Kight (founder, Gay Liberation Front) and Rev. Troy Perry (founder, Metropolitan Community Church) and the Christopher Street West Association, was held on June 28, 1970 in Los Angeles. L.A.'s Gay Pride Parade permit did not come easily. No city had, until that time, ever experienced thousands of LGBTQ people marching openly and LAPD Chief Edward Davis did not hesitate to remind organizers that homosexuality was still illegal in California. Rev. Perry recounted that Davis declared to them, “As far as I’m concerned, granting a permit to a group of homosexuals to parade down Hollywood Boulevard would be the same as giving a permit to a group of thieves and robbers.” The Los Angeles Police Commission, for their part, claiming to fear violent homophobic counter-reactions, imposed excessive permit requirements, such as $1.5 million in fees. Parade organizers and the ACLU challenged the city in court, taking their fight all the way to the California Supreme Court. The court ended up ordering the city to issue a parade permit without discriminatory add-ons. L.A.’s Gay Pride Parade became the world’s first officially-permitted parade advocating for LGBTQ rights. The parade was moved from Hollywood in Los Angeles to West Hollywood in 1979.
8. 1966 Black Cat Raid Established in 1966, the Personal Rights in Defense and Education (PRIDE) group set out to combat police harassment of homosexuals and provide a social outlet for gay men in Los Angeles. Founded by Steve Ginsburg, co-chair of the 1973 Gay Freedom Day Parade in San Francisco, the gay rights organization existed for only two years but made a profound and lasting impact. On Feb. 11, 1967, PRIDE organized a peaceful demonstration protesting the Los Angeles Police Department’s raid of the Black Cat Tavern, a gay bar in the Silverlake neighborhood of Los Angeles. Undercover vice squad officers beat and arrested gay male patrons on the evening of Dec. 31, 1966, for openly engaging in the traditional New Year’s Eve kiss. PRIDE’s action in response to the Black Cat Tavern incident was one of the earliest organized gay rights demonstrations in the United States. Two years later, the Stonewall Riots, a series of spontaneous demonstrations protesting police raids at the Stonewall Inn in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City, would usher in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer and transgender/transsexual (LGBTQ) rights movement. Prior to the police raid on the Black Cat Tavern, PRIDE published a single-page monthly newsletter that would become The Los Angeles Advocate. The original newsletter provided legal advice and printed an updated list of gay-friendly bars in the Los Angeles area. The Los Angeles Advocate would later evolve into the oldest and largest LGBTQ publication in the United States. Now known simply as The Advocate, the publication still runs monthly and covers the LGBTQ community. PRIDE also created a small instructional booklet called The Pocket Lawyer for people to carry in the event that they were arrested for homosexual conduct. The booklet made clear an individual’s right to refuse to make a statement or to give personal information, such as employment.
9. 1966 First public same-sex marriage (by the Metropolitan Community Churches’s Rev. Troy Perry, 1968) LA's gay history is everywhere, from the endangered former nightclub The Factory to Griffith Park. But in honor of today's landmark Supreme Court decision on marriage equality, why not go and take a look at a particularly special site—this modest Huntington Park house, described by TIME magazine as the house where the first public gay marriage ceremony took place back in 1968. At the time, the house was the location of the Metropolitan Community Church of Los Angeles; the religious organization, founded in October of that year by Reverend Troy D. Perry, was open to LGBT members, as explained on MCC's website. The first MCC service had 12 attendees. In December 1968, the reverend performed the ceremony for two men (it was, of course, not legally binding then). More marriages followed. In March 1969, the reverend oversaw the marriage of two women; their wedding would go on, says an MCC historian, to be "the basis for the world's first lawsuit seeking recognition of same-gender marriage." (Some sources cite this union as the first same-sex marriage, but agree that whichever couple was first, it was Rev. Perry who officiated.)
13. LOS ANGELES CITYWIDE HISTORIC CONTEXT STATEMENT Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Context Statement - The lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) historic context is a component of SurveyLA’s citywide historic context statement and was partially funded with a grant from the California Office of Historic Preservation. This context provides guidance to SurveyLA field surveyors in identifying and evaluating potential historic resources relating to Los Angeles’ rich LGBTQ history.
14. 1967 The Society of Anubis formed - 800 members - "the membership strives to present to the public a true picture of the homosexual as a worthwhile member of society."
15. 1968 LGBTQ-inclusive Metropolitan Community Church founded by Reverend Troy Perry
17. Discrimination against LGBTQ immigrants has a long history in U.S. immigration policy The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, while it reversed the national origin quota system, became the first policy to explicitly prevent “sexual deviates” from entering the country under the guise of a medical exclusion. The Act also requirePost-war America saw the rise not only of the Red Scare, but also a lesser known “lavender scare” in which the federal government launched a “Pervert Elimination Campaign.” This discriminatory policy resulted in the arrests, firings, and general social persecution of LGBTQ Americans working for the federal government. This anti-LGBTQ sentiment spilled over into the broader culture as well, causing concern among LGBTQ individuals working in different industries across the country. The government’s anti-LGBTQ attitudes were insidious, and found their way into immigration policy as well. The 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act upheld the controversial national origins quota system that had been established in 1924, despite President Harry Truman’s opinion that the law was racist and discriminatory. In addition to reinforcing the national origins quota, the 1952 INA also instituted new, anti-Communist and anti-LGBTQ laws preventing people from entering the country or obtaining green cards or citizenship. The INA referred to LGBTQ people as “aliens afflicted with a psychopathic personality, epilepsy or mental defect.” The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, while it reversed the national origin quota system, became the first policy to explicitly prevent “sexual deviates” from entering the country under the guise of a medical exclusion. The Act also required the legacy Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS, now subsumed by the Department of Homeland Security) to deport LGBTQ people. This policy was not reformed until the Immigration Act of 1990, when sexual orientation was finally removed as a grounds of exclusion from the U.S. However, the ban on HIV/AIDS-positive individuals from entering the U.S., which was signed into law by President Ronald Reagan in 1987, remained in effect until 2010. HIV/AIDS disproportionately affected the LGBTQ community in the 1980s, making the bans particularly harmful to LGBTQ migrants even after the ban on entry due to sexual orientation was lifted.