This Movie has been showing this june on selected PBS stations
ScheduleThree years before the 1969 New York Stonewall Riot, The San Fransco
Comptons Cafatera Riot in 1966 was a pivotal point the GLBT movement.
this emmy award winning documentrary "Screaming Queens" puts this event in perspective.
A
gay.com news article describes the upcoming comertive events and outlines the historic events
http://zoom.gay.com/viewArticle.do?id=797&selectedRegionId=7Quote
by Marc Breindel
Gay.com
<snip>
Police routinely harassed queer people in those days. The so-called
"gayola" scandal had occurred just a few years before, when SF
police were revealed to be extorting bribes from gay bar owners,
prompting the formation of the San Francisco Tavern Guild in
self-defense. Homosexuality -- not to mention transsexuality -- was
still categorized as a mental illness, grounds for arrest and
institutionalization.
When the police arrived at Compton's Cafeteria to give the assumed
trouble-makers a scare that night, the local queens got angrier than
usual. An officer moved to arrest one Compton's regular -- a drag
queen -- and she threw a cup of coffee in his face. Mayhem ensued.
Dishes, furniture and windows were broken; transgender folk attacked
police with their sturdy high heel shoes and heavy handbags. Police
called for reinforcement. When management tried to close the
cafeteria, the crowd smashed more windows. Rioters went on to
shatter all the windows of a police car, and to burn a newspaper
stand to the ground.
Next night an even larger group of social activists -- drag queens,
gay men, hippies, street hustlers and others -- returned to picket
Compton's Cafeteria. Civil disobedience continued for some time,
throughout the Tenderloin.
