Great Wall Institute: The Process of the Great Wall of Los AngelesMain MenuResearch of the DecadesResearch1960s Illustration DevelopmentIllustration DevelopmentPlaylists of the DecadesPlaylistssparcinla.org185fc5b2219f38c7b63f42d87efaf997127ba4fcGreat Wall Institute - Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC)
Discovering the 'Screaming Queens'
1media/Screen Shot 2023-03-27 at 1.51.39 PM_thumb.png2023-03-27T20:55:30+00:00Gina Leonf0ac362b4453e23ee8a94b1a49fbeeafde2a0a4911"No one knows the exact date of the Compton’s Cafeteria riot. In fact, if it wasn’t for Dr Susan Stryker, the event might have been almost entirely forgotten. The trans historian was rifling through the Gay and Lesbian Historical Society archives in 1991 when she stumbled on a timeline of historic events that referenced an August 1966 event: “Drag queens protest police harassment at Compton’s Cafeteria”. The file included almost no additional information, and Stryker was determined to find out more. “There’s a story here that I need to tell,” she recalled in a recent interview in a coffee shop on San Francisco’s bustling Market Street, not far from the building where she first made that discovery. It took Stryker years to figure out what happened. A city archivist told her there were no arrest reports, that the “records have been disappeared”. So she slowly built her own paper trail and learned how the corner of Turk and Taylor streets, where Compton’s was located, was “trans central”. Eventually, she met Amanda St Jaymes, a trans woman who had lived in a hotel in the area and was present at the riot"plain2023-03-27T20:55:30+00:001966Gina Leonf0ac362b4453e23ee8a94b1a49fbeeafde2a0a49