The Compton's Cafeteria Riot occurred in August 1966 in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco. This incident was one of the first recorded LGBT-related riots in United States history, along with the Cooper Do-nuts Riot, preceding the more famous 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York City. It marked the beginning of transgender activism in San Francisco.
The 1960s was a critical time period for sexual, gender, and ethnic minorities—social movements which honed in on civil rights and sexual liberation came into fruition, and even churches, like the Glide Memorial Methodist Church in San Francisco, began reaching out to the transgender community. Still, many police officers resisted this change and continued to abuse and ostracize transgender people. This simultaneous rise in support for transgender rights on one side, and the unwillingness to accept these new ideas on the other, created the strain that would fuel the riot at Compton's Cafeteria in the summer of 1966, in which a transgender woman resisted arrest by throwing coffee at a police officer and drag queens poured into the streets, fighting back with their high heels and heavy bags.