In the News: Beyond Chron

Celebrating Compton’s 50th: Vanguard Revisited, W/ Rev. Megan Rohrer

by Randy Shaw on September 6, 2016

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Reverend Megan Rohrer

If you missed the prior events celebrating the 50^th anniversary of the August 1966 Compton’s Cafeteria riots in San Francisco’s Tenderloin, don’t despair. On Thursday, September 8, the Tenderloin Museum hosts Reverend Megan Rohrer, who will honor the historic legacy of Vanguard, San Francisco’s first gay liberation group.

In 2011, Rohrer and historian Joey Plaster created a remarkable work of public history: Vanguard Revisited, which introduced the history of the 1960s radical queer-youth organization Vanguard to contemporary queer homeless youth, who created their own art and poetry zine in conversation with essays and themes from the original Vanguard newsletter. The new zine also featured archival materials, a historical narrative and writings from urban ministers and youth organizers.

The storytelling project Temporal Cities will attend the event to share and record LGBTQ stories. Listen to a piece of oral history in their rotary phone, or type your own memories on a real typewriter.
Temporal Cities is a public art project that examines the experience of living in the Tenderloin through the stories of its residents. For more information about the project, visit TemporalCities.org.

For the 50th Anniversary Compton’s Commemoration, a second issue of the Vanguard Revisited zine will be released with new materials by the original authors and editors. For the Tenderloin Museum program, Rohrer will describe the initial process leading up to Vanguard Revisited and will discuss its legacy. Rohrer is the pastor of Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church in San Francisco and is a nationally recognized leader on issues of homelessness, gender, sexuality and faith.

The Compton’s riot is only a part of the Tenderloin’s GLBT legacy. The Tenderloin was the geographic center of the city’s emerging GLBT movement from the 1940’s through the 1960’s, a story on display at the Tenderloin Museum.

ABOUT TEMPORAL CITIES
Temporal Cities will be stationed inside the Museum during the event, collecting stories related to the LGBTQ experience in the Tenderloin. Temporal Cities is a public art project that examines the experience of living in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood, through the stories of its residents. The piece combines analog slide projection and interactive storytelling; a projected image mounted on the street attracts passersby to the installation, where they are encouraged to share a personal story that took place nearby. In collecting and archiving these stories, artists Lizzy Brooks and Radka Pulliam are building a nuanced map that explores the changing nature of the city and our collective ideas of permanence.
Here is the ticket information.
Randy Shaw details the Tenderloin’s GBLT history in The Tenderloin: Sex, Crime and Resistance in the Heart of San Francisco

In the News: The Advocate

WATCH: March Honors 46th Anniversary of Compton's Cafeteria Riots

Nearly five decades later, San Franciscans look back at a major turning point in trans liberation.

BY Diane Anderson-Minshall

August 23 2012 5:31 PM ET

In the 1960s, Compton's Cafeteria in San Francisco's gritty Tenderloin neighborhood was virtually the only place in the city where transgender folks could congregate publicly, as they weren't allowed in gay bars at the time. Cross-dressing was still illegal in the city, and the local police often used the presence of trans women as a pretext for raiding and closing gay bars.
The patrons at Compton's were used to being rousted by the police, but one night, after a cop attempted to arrest one trans woman, that "street queen" (as the women were often called) fought back and tossed her drink into the officer's face. A huge riot broke out and spilled into the neighborhood, becomimg one of the first transgender uprisings in the U.S., three years before New York's Stonewall. (There was a much smaller riot in L.A. in 1959.)

Trans people weren't the only ones rioting as the hours went on; they were joined by many from the country's first youth group, Vanguard Youth, as well as numerous street dykes, queer hustlers, and neighborhood locals. Later LGBT folks from other parts of the city joined in.
The Compton's riot was a turning point in trans liberation, and by 1969 the first transgender advocacy group in the nation -- and the world -- had been founded, according to GLBTQ.com.