Riot at Compton's Cafeteria

Tonight in Seaver Hall at Harvard University, historian Susan Stryker spoke on her 2005 film (with Victor Silverman and Jack Walsh), Screaming Queens: Riot at Compton's Cafeteria. Compton's was one of the few hangouts for drag queens in San Francisco in 1966. When the management calls the cops on a noisy table of drag queen regulars, coffee is thrown in a cop's face. Soon a full-on riot breaks out as tables are thrown and windows smashed. It was almost three years before Stonewall.

The film begins with grainy footage of 1960s San Francisco at night. A deep announcer's voice, dripping with Vitalis proclaims "every big city has its areas of fleshly pleasures. For San Francisco, it is the Tenderloin." Before you can say "reefer madness" the voice recedes and a middle-aged woman appears speaking of her time in the Tenderloin. With warmth and simple honesty, she tells a story of violence, drugs, prostitution and the comradorie of "the girls." Before the mid-60s, their lives were actually exciting and at times glamorous. But when drugs and violence took over the Tenderloin, the police cracked down, causing more violence to the transpeople.

On a hot August night (Stryker cannot locate the exact date as "everyone did a lot of drugs back then and can't recall") the usual crowd gathered at Compton's Cafeteria, a chain cafeteria in the 1950-60s mode. Cops came by to get paid off and to shove patrons out the door who were deemed too loud or drunk or just because the cops did not like them. On this night, the cops were called and the patrons, mostly dragqueens and some male hustlers, fought back.

The lives of the transexuals had become grim. Most were prostitutes and many were on drugs. They lived in transient hotels. But then a glimmer of hope: news of a sex-change operation performed for the first time in the U.S. For many of the women, this was the first bit of good news in a long time. Later, many pointed to this moment as a turning point.

After the film Styker took a few questions from a packed classroom.

Although the Compton's riot happened before Stonewall, the point of the movie was not to displace Stonewall's position as a "first." Stryker pointed out that actions like Compton's can be traced as far back as 1960 and even before. She placed Compton's in a genre of incidents rather than a "first incident." If you want your local PBS station to air the movie, ask them.

Please see web address below for more information. Photo from Screaming Queens website www.screamingqueensmovie.com.