May 18, 1872 Bertrand Russell Birthday of Sir Bertrand Russell, British philosopher, logician, essayist, and social critic, a leading figure in his country’s anti-nuclear movement. In 1954 he delivered his “Man’s Peril [from the Hydrogen Bomb]” broadcast on the BBC, condemning the Bikini H-bomb tests, and warning of the threat to humanity from the development of nuclear weapons: “. . . as a human being to other human beings: remember your humanity, and forget the rest.” A year later, together with Albert Einstein nine other scientists, he released the Russell-Einstein Manifesto calling for the curtailment of nuclear weapons. Text of the Russell-Einstein Manifesto He became the founding president of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in 1958. He resigned in 1960, however, and formed the more militant Committee of 100 with the overt aim of inciting mass civil disobedience, and he himself with Lady Russell led mass sit-ins in 1961 that brought them a two-month prison sentence, at the age of 89. Bertrand Russell in front of the British Ministry of Defence, Whitehall, London
May 18, 1896 Supreme Court endorsed “separate but equal” facilities for those of different races with its Plessy v. Ferguson decision, a ruling that was overturned 58 years later.
May 18, 1972 Margaret (Maggie) Kuhn founded the Gray Panthers (originally called the Consultation of Older and Younger Adults for Social Change) to consider the common problems faced by retirees — loss of income, loss of contact with associates, and loss of one of society’s most distinguishing social roles, one’s job. The members discovered a new kind of freedom in their retirement — the freedom to speak personally and passionately about what they believed in, such as their collective opposition to the Vietnam War.
May 18, 1974 In the Rajasthan Desert in the state of Pokhran, India successfully detonated its first nuclear weapon, a fission bomb similar in explosive power to the U.S. atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. The test fell on the traditional anniversary of the Buddha’s enlightenment, and Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi received the message “Buddha has smiled” from the exuberant test-site scientists after the detonation. The test, which made India the world’s sixth nuclear power, broke the nuclear monopoly of the five members of the U.N. Security Council—the United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, China, and France. Detailed background on India’s nuclear weapons program and its first test
May 18, 1979 A jury in a federal court in Silkwood v. Kerr-McGee established a company’s responsibility for damage to the health of a worker in the nuclear industry. Karen Silkwood worked for the Kerr-McGee Nuclear Corporation at their Cimmaron, Texas, plant where plutonium was manufactured. Silkwood had become the first female member of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers bargaining committee, focusing on worker safety issues, but had suffered radiation exposure in a series of unexplained incidents. The jury in Judge Frank G. Theis’s court awarded her estate $505,000 in actual damages, and $10 million punitive damages. Karen Silkwood’s sisters and parents She had died in a car accident on her way to a meeting with a The New York Times reporter five years earlier. Karen Silkwood remembered The Supreme Court upheld the decision and the award
May 17, 1919 The Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) was formally established in Zurich, Switzerland.
May 17, 1954 In a major civil rights victory, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a unanimous decision in Brown v. Board of Education, ruling “separate but equal” public education to be unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment, which guarantees equal treatment under the law. The historic decision, bringing an end to federal tolerance of racial segregation, specifically dealt with Linda Brown, a young African American girl denied admission to her local elementary school in Topeka, Kansas, because of the color of her skin. Read more and more Above: Nettie Hunt and her daughter Nickie on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court, 1954. George E. C. Hayes, Thurgood Marshall and James M. Nabrit (left to right), the successful legal team, celebrate the Brown decision. . . three years later . . .
May 17, 1957 Martin Luther King, Jr. led 30,00 on a Prayer Pilgrimage to Washington, D.C. to mark the third anniversary of Brown vs. Board of Education decision in which the Supreme Court declared racial segregation in education unconstitutional.
May 17, 1968 A group of anti-war activists who came to be known as the “Catonsville Nine,” including Philip and Daniel Berrigan, broke into the Catonsville, Maryland, draft board center and burned over 600 draft files. The Catonsville Nine in a picture taken in the police station minutes after the action. From left to right (standing) George Mische, Philip Berrigan, Daniel Berrigan, Tom Lewis. From left to right (seated) David Darst, Mary Moylan, John Hogan, Marjorie Melville, Tom Melville. photo Jean Walsh Read more about the Catonsville Nine
May 17, 1970 100 protesters staged a silent “die-in” at Fifth Avenue and Pine Street in downtown Seattle to protest shipment through their city of Army nerve gas being transported from Okinawa, Japan, to the Umatilla Army Depot in eastern Oregon. Outrage and Rebellion
May 17, 1973 In Washington, D.C., the Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, headed by Senator Sam Ervin of North Carolina, began televised hearings on the escalating Watergate affair. One week later, Harvard Law Professor Archibald Cox was sworn in as Watergate special prosecutor. Flashback: On June 17, 1972, five men were arrested for breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C. with the intent to set up wiretaps. One of the suspects, James W. McCord, Jr., was revealed to be the salaried security coordinator for President Richard Nixon’s reelection committee.
May 17, 2004 Marcia Kadish, 56, and Tanya McCloskey, 52, of Malden, Massachusetts, were married at Cambridge City Hall in Massachusetts, becoming the first legally married same-sex partners in the United States. Over the course of the day, 77 other such couples tied the knot across the state, and hundreds more applied for marriage licenses. The day was characterized by much celebration and only a few of the expected protests materialized. Read more
On Thursday, Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk — a far-right federal judge in the Northern District of Texas with a record of aligning with the GOP’s most extreme legal positions — issued a ruling declaring that Title VII no longer protects LGBTQ+ people from workplace discrimination. The decision directly contradicts the Supreme Court’s landmark 2020 ruling inBostock v. Clayton County, which held that discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity is, by definition, sex discrimination. Kacsmaryk’s ruling marks one of the most alarming judicial rollbacks of LGBTQ+ rights in recent memory — and sets up a direct legal challenge to one of the foundational civil rights protections for queer and trans people in the United States.
The case was brought against the EEOC by the state of Texas alongside the Heritage Foundation, a central force behindProject 2025 — an aggressive right-wing policy blueprint that explicitly calls for rolling back LGBTQ+ protections in federal law. In siding with the plaintiffs, Judge Kacsmaryk pointed to the Texas Department of Agriculture’s current employee policy, which requires “employees to comply with this dress code in a manner consistent with their biological gender,” specifying that “men may wear pants” and “women may wear dresses, skirts, or pants.” The ruling also upheld the department’s policy banning transgender employees from using restrooms that align with their gender identity.
The judge reached a verdict that Title VII only protects “firing someone simply for being homosexual or transgender,” but that it does not protect transgender or gay people from “harassment”:
Judge Kacsmaryk ruling that gay and trans people can be harassed without repercussion under Title VII.
“In sum, Title VII does not bar workplace employment policies that protect the inherent differences between men and women,” Kacsmaryk writes in his ruling.
Judge Kacsmaryk further argued that disparate treatment of transgender employees does not constitute unequal treatment, reasoning that “a male employee must use male facilities like other males” — a statement that erases transgender identity altogether. He extended that logic to dress codes and pronouns, claiming that requiring employees to adhere to clothing standards and pronoun use based on their assigned sex at birth is not discriminatory because it applies “equally” to everyone. The argument mirrors the discredited legal reasoning once used to uphold bans on same-sex marriage — that such laws didn’t discriminate against gay people because they, like straight people, were allowed to marry someone of the opposite sex. It’s a circular logic designed to mask exclusion as neutrality. It also flies in the face of the fact that Texas allows people assigned female at birth to wear gender “pants, skirts, and dresses” but denies that same right to people assigned male at birth.
Kacsmaryk, a former lawyer for an anti-LGBTQ hate group, was exposed in 2023 for failing to disclose millions in stock holdings.
Kacsmaryk was previously exposed for failing to disclose viciously anti-LGBTQ interviews and acting to hide his authorship of an anti-abortion article ahead of his Senate confirmation hearing.
Republican and Christian groups regularly filed their lawsuits in his district because they know they’ll get a friendly ear.
I think there’s a blurb about this on Peace History, but I could be misrecalling. Anyway, here is far more of the story. Language alert, from the beginning.
Queer History 111: Before the Stonewall Riots, There Was Compton’s Cafeteria by Wendy🏳️⚧️🏳️🌈🌈 Read on Substack
You’ve heard about Stonewall—everyone has. It’s become the sanitized, rainbow-washed origin story of the LGBTQ+ rights movement that gets trotted out every Pride month by corporations selling overpriced merchandise. But three years before Stonewall rocked New York City, a group of fierce-as-fuck transgender women and drag queens in San Francisco’s gritty Tenderloin district had already thrown the first punch in the fight for queer liberation. The Compton’s Cafeteria Riot of 1966 wasn’t just a footnote in history—it was a goddamn declaration of war against police brutality and societal oppression that’s been deliberately erased from our collective memory.
Let me tell you something straight up: these women weren’t politely asking for their rights with carefully worded petitions. They were fighting for their very existence in a society that treated them like garbage. And when pushed to their absolute limit one hot August night, they didn’t just push back—they burned the whole system down. Literally throwing coffee in cops’ faces, smashing windows, and lighting a police car on fire. This wasn’t a “disturbance” or an “incident”—it was a motherfucking riot, and it’s time we remember it for what it was.
The Tenderloin: Where Society Dumped Its “Undesirables”
San Francisco’s Tenderloin district in the 1960s wasn’t the gentrified hipster paradise it’s becoming today. It was a last-resort neighborhood—the only place that would accept the people society had discarded. Transgender women, particularly trans women of color, found themselves with precious few options for survival. Denied employment, housing, and basic human dignity, many turned to sex work simply to eat and keep a roof over their heads.
“We couldn’t get jobs, couldn’t get housing, couldn’t even walk down the street without being arrested,” recalled Amanda St. Jaymes, a trans woman who lived in the Tenderloin during this era. “The cops would book us as ‘female impersonators’ and throw us in the men’s jail. Do you have any fucking idea what happened to us in there?”
The brutal reality was that transgender women faced constant police harassment under California’s “masquerade laws,” which made it illegal to dress in clothing of the “opposite sex.” Cops could and did arrest trans women for the crime of simply existing in public. These weren’t occasional incidents—this was systematic persecution backed by the full force of the law.
Gene Compton’s Cafeteria, a 24-hour diner at the corner of Taylor and Turk, was one of the few places trans women could gather safely—or so they thought. Open all night, it became an unofficial community center for transgender women, drag queens, gay hustlers, and other marginalized folks who had nowhere else to go. But the management often called the police when too many “queens” gathered, leading to regular harassment and arrests.
“The Night I Got Tired of Being Bullied”
On a hot night in August 1966 (the exact date has been lost to history), the simmering tension finally boiled over. When police attempted to arrest a transgender woman at Compton’s for the “crime” of being there, she threw her coffee in the officer’s face. What followed was an explosion of rage that had been building for decades.
“It wasn’t planned,” said Felicia Elizondo, a transgender activist who frequented Compton’s. “It was just the night I got tired of being bullied. We all got tired at the same fucking moment.”
The cafeteria erupted. Cups, saucers, and trays became projectiles. The plate glass windows of the restaurant were smashed. A newsstand was set on fire. The women fought back with everything they had—high heels, heavy purses, and righteous fury. When a police car pulled up outside, it was immediately surrounded, its windows broken and, according to some accounts, set ablaze.
“Those queens fought like hell,” remembered one witness. “You’d think a bunch of ‘girls’ couldn’t do much damage, but honey, when you’ve been beaten and raped by cops, when you’ve been refused medical care, when your own family has thrown you out like trash—you fight like someone with nothing left to lose.”
The riot spilled into the streets and continued through the night. Unlike at Stonewall, there were no photographers present, no reporters to document what happened. The next day, more transgender women and supporters returned to picket the cafeteria, which had banned transgender customers in response to the riot. This marked one of the first known instances of organized transgender direct action in U.S. history.
The Cover-Up and Erasure
Here’s where the story gets even more fucked up: this watershed moment was almost completely erased from history. No major newspapers covered it. Police records of the incident mysteriously disappeared. For decades, Compton’s Cafeteria Riot existed only in the memories of those who were there, many of whom didn’t survive the AIDS crisis of the 1980s and ’90s.
“They didn’t want people to know we fought back,” explained historian Susan Stryker, whose groundbreaking documentary “Screaming Queens” finally brought the riot to public attention in 2005. “Transgender resistance didn’t fit the narrative they wanted to tell about passive victims who needed saving.”
The erasure was so complete that even many LGBTQ+ historians were unaware of the riot until nearly 40 years after it occurred. When Stryker discovered a brief reference to the “uprising of drag queens” in the archives of gay liberation periodicals, she had to piece together what happened through painstaking interviews with survivors and witnesses.
Why was this history buried? Simple: it centered transgender women—particularly trans women of color—as the vanguard of the LGBTQ+ liberation movement. It challenged the comfortable narrative that the movement began with Stonewall and was led primarily by white gay men. The Compton’s story was inconvenient for those who wanted to sanitize queer history for mainstream consumption.
The Aftermath: Real Fucking Change
What makes the Compton’s Cafeteria Riot even more remarkable is that it actually led to concrete changes in San Francisco. In the aftermath, a network of transgender support services emerged. The city established the Tenderloin Health Clinic, which provided hormones and healthcare to transgender people—the first of its kind in the nation. The police department even initiated the first-ever training on interacting with transgender people.
Sergeant Elliott Blackstone, the SFPD’s first liaison to the “homophile community,” became an unlikely ally. After the riot, he worked with transgender activists to stop police harassment and helped establish programs to support transgender residents. “I just treated them like human beings,” Blackstone later said, “which nobody else was doing.”
The riot also galvanized the formation of organizations like Vanguard, one of the first gay youth organizations in the U.S., and the National Transsexual Counseling Unit, the first peer-run support organization for transgender people. These laid the groundwork for the transgender rights movement that continues today.
“We built something from nothing,” said Tamara Ching, a Tenderloin activist who lived through this era. “We created community when the whole damn world wanted us dead or invisible.”
The Women Who Led the Charge
The heroes of Compton’s didn’t get streets named after them or Hollywood biopics made about their lives. Many died in obscurity, their contributions uncelebrated. Women like Alexis Miranda, who later became an influential transgender activist; Tamara Ching, who fought for the rights of transgender sex workers; and Amanda St. Jaymes, who established support services for transgender women in the Tenderloin.
“Some of the fiercest women I ever knew didn’t live to see their impact,” recalls Felicia Elizondo, one of the few surviving veterans of the Tenderloin scene. “They died from violence, from AIDS, from the sheer exhaustion of fighting every day just to exist.”
Unlike Stonewall, where key figures like Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera eventually received some recognition (though still not enough), many of the women who fought at Compton’s remain nameless in historical records. Their revolutionary act was nearly lost to history, remembered only by those who were there.
The anonymity of many Compton’s participants speaks to the precarious nature of transgender life in the 1960s—and still today. Many lived under assumed names, without identification documents, invisible to official records. They existed in the margins, which made their uprising all the more remarkable and all the more easily erased.
Why This Matters Now More Than Ever
If you think this is just ancient history, wake the fuck up. In 2023, we’re seeing the most aggressive legislative assault on transgender rights in modern history. Over 500 anti-trans bills have been introduced in state legislatures in recent years. Access to healthcare is being restricted. Transgender people are being banned from public spaces. Sound familiar?
“It’s the same playbook,” says Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, a transgender elder who has been fighting for rights since the 1960s. “Criminalize our existence, push us out of public spaces, make it impossible to live authentically. They’ve just dressed it up in fancier language.”
The courage of the women at Compton’s Cafeteria provides a powerful template for resistance in the face of overwhelming oppression. They didn’t wait for permission to fight back. They didn’t seek respectability. They recognized that when a system is designed to destroy you, sometimes you have to break the whole damn thing and start over.
“We’ve been here before,” warns historian Jules Gill-Peterson. “And the lesson from Compton’s isn’t to write polite letters to politicians. It’s that direct action gets the goods. It’s that sometimes you have to throw the first punch—or the first coffee cup.”
The Legacy: From Shadows to Celebration
Today, the corner of Taylor and Turk in the Tenderloin bears a plaque commemorating the riot. In 2017, the city of San Francisco renamed a section of Turk Street as “Compton’s Transgender Cultural District”—the first legally recognized transgender district in the world. It’s a belated recognition of the community that has called this area home for over half a century and the uprising that marked its coming of age.
But the real legacy of Compton’s isn’t in plaques or street names—it’s in the radical tradition of transgender resistance it established. From Compton’s to Stonewall to the modern movements against police brutality, the thread of transgender leadership in liberation struggles remains unbroken, even when unacknowledged.
“Those girls didn’t have Twitter or TikTok or any way to document what they did,” reflects contemporary transgender activist Raquel Willis. “But they changed the world anyway. Imagine what we can do now with all the tools and visibility we have.”
The next time you celebrate Pride, remember that it wasn’t born from corporate sponsorships and rainbow capitalism. It was born from a coffee cup thrown in a cop’s face by a transgender woman who had decided she wasn’t going to take any more shit. It was born from the broken windows of a cafeteria in the Tenderloin and the fiery determination of women who fought back when the world told them they shouldn’t even exist.
That’s the legacy of Compton’s Cafeteria Riot—not just a historical footnote, but a battle cry that still echoes today: We have always been here. We have always fought back. And we’re not going anywhere.
References
Stryker, S. (2008). Transgender History: The Roots of Today’s Revolution.
Stryker, S., & Silverman, V. (Directors). (2005). Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton’s Cafeteria [Documentary].
Transgender Law Center. (2017). Compton’s Transgender Cultural District Report.
Dzodan, F. (2021). Before Stonewall: The Trans Women Who Sparked a Revolution.
Armstrong, E. A., & Crage, S. M. (2006). Movements and Memory: The Making of the Stonewall Myth.
Williams, C. (2014). Transgender History in the United States: A Special Unabridged Version of a Book Chapter.
Elizondo, F. (2015, August 26). Personal interview by Nicole Pasulka for Vice: “Ladies in the Streets: Before Stonewall, Transgender Uprising Changed Lives.”
Zolnierek / iStock / Getty Images Plus
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