Three years before Stonewall, trans women, drag queens, and street hustlers in San Francisco’s Tenderloin fought back against routine police harassment at Gene Compton’s Cafeteria, a 24-hour diner that served the neighborhood’s LGBTQ community. The riot is widely recognized — and was rediscovered by historian Susan Stryker for the 2005 documentary Screaming Queens — as the first recorded act of collective trans resistance to police violence in US history. A historical plaque was installed at the corner of Turk and Taylor in 2006.

Why it’s been targeted

California’s 2011 FAIR Education Act requires LGBTQ history including the Compton’s riot in social-studies standards. Multiple states have moved against any such instruction: Florida HB 1557, Texas SB 17 (higher-ed DEI ban, 2023) and SB 12 (2025), and a January 2025 federal executive order on “patriotic education” directly target trans-history curriculum. Slate documented in 2025 the rapid dismantling of LGBTQ history modules including Compton’s; Don Romesburg, the lead curriculum author, said the modules were stripped under Trump-era federal pressure.