IF we do not preserve and respect our own history we cannot demand that others do and if that upon which we base our stories is demonstrably faulty yet vehemently defended, we hand others a weapon that can be used against us.
The Tenderloin District in San Francisco was established shortly after the Gold Rush began in 1849. It is a downtown neighborhood that sprang up on the existing dry land and would be later separated from direct waterfront location as parts of the Bay were filled in. Its main street now separates Chinatown on one side from North Beach, the Italian section on the other and cuts from the shore to the city’s center. Because of the activity taking place in its various establishments and accompanying nightlife, it was called the “Tenderloin” for obvious reasons as far back as the 1890s. Almost all of the buildings there were destroyed by the Earthquake in 1906 and were immediately rebuilt as it was considered part of Downtown.
By the 1920s, the ”Tenderloin” was known for gambling, billiard halls, boxing gyms, speakeasies, theaters, restaurants and other nightlife, into which, because of the Red Light Abatement Act, prostitution and other vices took residence as these were forced into one section of the city to make the rest clean. Other cities over time began to do this and that is why, for a while, Boston had its Combat Zone while others created Red Light Districts. It also provided work for many musicians in the neighborhood’s theaters, hotels, burlesque houses, bars and clubs.
Historically a hotel area, housing was mostly single room and occupied by mostly singles and those who could not afford to live in nicer areas either because of low incomes, or certain professions and personal modes of expression, platonic and intimate.
On August 13, 1961, the Tay-Bush Inn, a gathering place for Gays and Lesbians, was raided, and on New Year’s Day in 1965, police raided a Mardi Gras Ball at California Hall during an event sponsored by the Council on Religion and the Homosexual during which 600 people were photographed, several being prominent citizens.
These raids were common in this city and others, but this did not give any prominence to any of them with any press coverage just being short mentions of them in the newspaper until the next one. A place was raided, people arrested, and lives ruined, mainly for prurient interest and the need to read about “scandals”, which seem to come frequently.
Vanguard, begun in 1965 by Adrian Ravarour, was one of the first Gay, youth liberation groups in America and, beyond the raids, the Compton’s Cafeteria Riot was one of the earliest known GLBT uprisings in the U.S.
In August 1966 at Compton’s Cafeteria in The Tenderloin, a refuge for transgender people, drag queens, and others in the community, after having been called by management who found those gathered to be getting rowdy and, in Pre-Starbucks style, sans laptops, were hanging out in the coffee shop without many purchases, a police officer tried to arrest a transgender woman. There were few people known to be Transgender at the time, the term not becoming common until the 1990s and this person, known to be “Transexual” resisted by throwing coffee in the officer’s face, a riot began as patrons defended her, threw dishes, and clashed with police outside.
Sadly, being routine and with little coverage is an obscure isolated event in an area where the fringe was expected, it not only went under-reported, but a fire in SFPD headquarters in later years would erase all records and reports of the event with details becoming a distant memory with the name of the actual Transsexual person who actually threw a real thing to start the riot being lost except to those who were there and may have passed the name passed down to others later. It did, however, begin the collaboration between advocacy groups and city officials to address discrimination and laying the groundwork for future Rights efforts.
The founder of Vanguard has had his and Vanguard’s history rewritten to please an audience that craves history as they want it but do not accept it as it was.
Adrien now sees himself referred to as a “hustler”, with all that label entails with sex, drugs, and a sketchy lifestyle, when he had been a Mormon priest addressing a need he had seen to give those in The Tenderloin guidance and assistance. In the mid-1960s, there were very few transgender people in urban areas especially in unsafe ones, and the universal lack of understanding, then as now, often had the Trans people on the outside looking in with a bit of phobia directed toward them. Vanguard made it clear that Trans people were as welcomed as everyone else and were part of the larger Community, but recent accounts claim that, in spite of the founder’s own words and history, it had been a Trans organization from the beginning when, in reality, it was founded to help all the abandoned youth and members of the Community of which Trans people were accepted as part.
Three years later in June 1969, close to closing time of the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village in New York city, a bar whose last night of operation before its unpublicized imminent closing, was anything but routine as police entered the bar for what could have been an attempt to get the precinct’s last protection payment before the closure and perhaps the owner disappearing, ran into a problem that resulted in what would be seen as the Stonewall Riot and subsequent days of rebellion. This event, taking place on the same street as the offices of the Village Voice a few doors over, some of whose staff were in the office working on the upcoming issue, got immediate real time coverage unlike the many previous raids there and in other locations around the country and became labeled as the spark that ignited the modern Gay Rights Movement.
Although multiple eyewitness accounts of those present and familiar with the usuals who frequented the Inn point to Stormé DeLarverie, a mixed race, middle aged, butch lesbian, who at one point was being bundled violently into the back of a police car from her customary seat the the Stonewall’s entrance, yelling, “Aren’t you going to do something?”, and a later interview said, “The cop hit me, and I hit him back. The cops got what they gave”, in the modern version of that night, Storme is missing, unless in a quick reference.
The claim is made that, in an attempt to be the stars of the story much has been done by Cisgender, Gay, White Males to erase the leading role of Transgender people who may have been part of the riot, but can only claim being the instigators by erasing Storme’.
She has been replaced by a Transgender person who was not there the first night but whom they have chosen to be her replacement, Marsha Johnson who at the time was 23 and had yet to be known beyond her friends and associates, has often been credited with throwing a shot glass inside the bar while yelling she had had enough or throwing a brick outside as a signal for any action to begin, denied starting the uprising in a 1987 interview recalling that she had arrived at around “2:00”, that “the riots had already started” and by that time the Stonewall building had already been set on fire by police.
The riots reportedly started at around 1:20 a.m. with the attempted arrest of Storme’. Although many agreed that someone on the second night had climbed up a lamppost and dropped a heavy bag containing a brick onto a police car, shattering the windshield, the person’s identity would not be known to most of the people present, and this role would become part of Johnson’s legacy only later, after her murder, when people went back to look for details about her that may or not be actually True.
It’s important to remember that Johnson’s legacy lies in her activism for GLBT rights, particularly for Transgender and homeless youth, that began after Stonewall and for which she was chiefly known during the years between Stonewall and her joining the Gay Liberation Front, and her murder, rather than any alleged single act during the Stonewall riots. Which can easily be disproven.
On the morning before her funeral, as I was having coffee with Randy Wicker and his staff at his antique store in the Village, I was told many things about her, a bit of catharsis for them, and among their recollections was her absence the first night and what they claimed was her big moment, dropping the bagged brick onto the Police car windshield.
So, to recap and make clear that those of us attempting to preserve history are attempting to do so while being accused of erasure by the very people who accuse us.
A riot began when a Transgender person threw something in response to a police officer’s action, except it was three years before Stonewall, three thousand miles away, and what was thrown was not a brick or shot glass but a cup of coffee.
While this juxtaposition is satisfactory for those who prefer it, the process of recasting involves erasing a mixed race, middle aged, butch, Drag King who deserves recognition for reality, it also shows that those Cisgender, Gay, White males protecting her legacy are not the ones erasing race, age, Gender identity, Sexual Orientation, or the personhood of the real person for the sake of the Patriarchy, but fighting against erasure and rewriting while being condemned for that by those actually doing that.
Instead of allowing all the people there that night regardless of race, color, national origin, gender, gender expression, or sexual orientation to have been part of a huge, spontaneous reaction to injustice, we now spend our time looking for ways to divide the crowd up and decide who truly does not belong by dividing the community into separate identities and in doing so insultingly erasing actual people in favor of combining two events separated by distance and time, recasting and rewriting roles to come up with a history they like.
Compton Cafeteria: 1966, began when a known and seen Transsexual person threw a cup of coffee on a police officer and was witnessed doing so by all the people present.
Stonewall: 1969, began when a mixed race, middle aged, butch lesbian, known to many and witnessed by most present, yelled to the crowd to do something. Nothing was thrown the first night.
The modern story has replaced a coffee cup thrown by one person face to face with the other and, so, a more courageous act, with a brick no one saw thrown at a building from a distance, a less courageous one, by a person who was not there.
Those old enough and respectful enough of real history, having lived it, know this and see its misapplication and the danger creates.
