Isis King is on a mission to tell stories about LGBTQ+ history for a new generation, and she has set her eyes on the story of the Compton’s Cafeteria Riots of 1966. After starring as the narrator of HBO’s four-part limited series Equal, which dramatized various seminal moments throughout LGBTQ+ history, the 35-year-old model and actress recently told Attitude Magazine that Compton’s was on her mind, and elaborated further in an interview with them.
“I had never heard of Compton’s Cafeteria before doing Equal,” King told them. “We always hear the same story about Stonewall, which is so impactful [within] LGB and trans history, but there are other stories as well. I’m just excited to chip away at that and see that broaden with more representation in and around our history.”
Three years before the Stonewall Riots in New York City, the West Coast was embroiled in its own fight for LGBTQ+ liberation. San Francisco’s Tenderloin District has historically served as a safe haven for queer and trans people, and locals would often gather at Compton’s Cafeteria, an all-night diner that became a late-night hot spot. Restaurant management didn’t like that trans people were dining and hanging out at the establishment because they saw it as bad for business. Not long after, Compton’s began implementing a tax for trans patrons and tensions rose. One night in August, 1966, restaurant management called the police on trans patrons, and when an arrest was attempted on one of the women inside, she threw her hot coffee in the officer’s face, and a historic uprising ensued.
Victor Silverman and Susan Stryker’s 2005 documentary Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton’s Cafeteria offers an in-depth glimpse into the events that took place through interviews and first-hand accounts. The riot has been cited as one of the first known instances of collective queer resistance to police harassment in the history of the United States.
King made history herself when she burst onto the scene in 2008 as the first openly transgender woman to compete on America’s Next Top Model. She then went on to star in another modeling show, Strut, produced by Whoopi Goldberg. King has also done her fair share of acting in shows like The Bold and The Beautiful, and Ava DuVernay’s When They See Us. “I still don’t feel like we get the visibility that we need to really help us move forward. I always say that sometimes we have to look back at our past to see where we’re going in our future,” she told them.
Stonewall, a 2015 film about the Stonewall Riots, was widely decried by critics and queer advocates as white-washing the role of QTPOC and decentering the part that figures like Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera played in the uprising. Avoiding careless storytelling like that — and telling queer stories through a more historically accurate and just lens — are part of King’s vision for future projects.
“Sometimes people feel as if our history doesn’t affect them, and I think it’s just so important for people to see more trans representation,” King told them. “If we don’t see it, then how will we know what our contributions are? It was way more than just saying your thoughts on a mic. People lost their lives, people were put in prison, people were run off and beaten. They need to see all of this.”
Shows and documentaries like Equal, ABC’s When We Rise, a forthcoming biopic about Sir Lady Java starring Pose’s Hailie Sahar, and others prove that interest in retelling stories about our history remains high. Here’s hoping that interest manifests as real projects with widespread distribution — and the intention to tell our stories in sensitive, accurate, and powerful ways.
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