Activists in May hung banners on the side of the building that once housed Gene Compton’s Cafeteria.

Photo: Gooch

Imagine it’s a hot August night in 1966. The bars just closed and you head to Gene Compton’s Cafeteria, a 24-hour eatery and local favorite hangout for LGBTQ people. As you enter Compton’s, located at the corner of Turk and Taylor in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco, you see queer and transgender people existing in community with each other. Amid the chatter and laughter of the evening you witness a police officer walk over and forcibly grab a drag queen. The queen throws a cup of hot coffee in the officer’s face and the cafeteria erupts. What ensues becomes known as the Compton’s Cafeteria Riot, one of the earliest known instances of collective militant queer resista

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