Compton's Cafeteria Riot: Collective Action and Transformational Empowerment among Hypermarginalized Gender Nonconforming Communities

• In Event: 420 - Section on Sociology of Sex and Gender Paper Session. Gender, Sexualities and Emerging Social Movements (co-sponsored with the LGBTQ Caucus)

Abstract

During an August evening in 1966, a group of queer youth, drag queens, and transsexual hustlers rioted after police officers tried to eject a drag queen eating at Compton’s Cafeteria, an all-night diner in a poor inner-city neighborhood of San Francisco. In response, the drag queen threw coffee in the officer’s face, and a riot quickly ensued. Within a few months of this riot, the first affirming support services emerged by and for gender nonconforming people as an identity group.

By building on theoretical contributions from resource mobilization, collective identity, and collective empowerment, this paper seeks to understand how and why social change happens among hypermarginalized communities by focusing on a case study of the Compton’s Cafeteria Riot. Through extensive archival research and theoretical analysis, this paper seeks to answer the following questions: (1) How and why did a group of hypermarginalized individuals collectively mobilize for change despite numerous systems of oppression; and (2) How did this riot prompt the first affirming support services by and for gender nonconforming people as a collective group?

Author

• Angela Perone, University of Michigan