July 19, 1966: 57 years ago, Jul 18 1966, queer youth group Vanguard began picketing Gene [...]

57 years ago, Jul 18 1966, queer youth group Vanguard began picketing Gene Compton’s Cafeteria in San Francisco. The conflict at the cafeteria, a meeting place for gay & transgender people, soon led to the Compton’s Cafeteria Riot, a major flashpoint in early LGBT struggles

Vanguard was formed in 1965 to combat harassment of the Tenderloin’s queer youth by police and “middle class adults,” as well as to advocate for (and provide) health, housing, and addiction resources. The pickets began after Compton’s banned members of the group from the premises

Vanguard distributed a pamphlet by its president (who named himself after French revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat) that decried “the EXPLOITATION of youth by so-called NORMAL adults who make a fast buck off situations everyone else calls DEGENERATE, PERVERTED, and SICK”

About 2 weeks later (the precise date is lost), a riot broke out at Compton’s after transgender Vanguard leader Dixie Russo resisted arrest. Windows were smashed, police beaten, and a cop car destroyed. One rioter later remembered: “There was a lot of joy after it happened”

Taking place a full three years before the Stonewall Riots, the Compton’s Cafeteria Riot was a high point in the development of the militant queer rights movement in the Bay Area, which would move in more explicitly radical directions in the coming years
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