THIS DAY IN LGBTQ+ HISTORY: August 26
- 2 days ago
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AUGUST 26
Before Stonewall, There Was Compton’s
Our history didn’t start at Stonewall. We were already standing up, speaking out, and fighting back.
On August 26, 1966, transgender women, drag queens, and other queer people gathered outside Compton’s Cafeteria in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district. The action is connected to the resistance surrounding Compton’s Cafeteria, one of the earliest documented LGBTQ+ uprisings against police harassment in the United States, occurring nearly three years before Stonewall.
🏳️⚧️ Before the Movement Had a Spotlight
During the 1960s, transgender people, gender-nonconforming people, drag queens, sex workers, and other LGBTQ+ people living on society’s margins regularly experienced discrimination and police harassment.
Compton’s Cafeteria became an important gathering place for members of the community who were often unwelcome elsewhere.
Eventually, enough was enough.
The resistance surrounding Compton’s became an early example of LGBTQ+ people refusing to quietly accept mistreatment. It reminds us that some of the people with the least protection were among those willing to stand up first.
✊🏾 August 26 and Lesbian Visibility
August 26 also intersects with lesbian feminist history.
During the Women’s Strike for Equality on August 26, 1970, thousands of women across the country demonstrated for greater equality. The strike became a defining moment in the growing women’s liberation movement.
But lesbian women were also demanding that their voices be heard within that movement.
In Boston, members of Gay Women’s Liberation marched together under a lesbian banner during the August 26 demonstration. One participant later described it as a political coming out and a public declaration of lesbian existence within the feminist movement.
Their presence sent a message that still matters:
You cannot talk about women’s equality while leaving LGBTQ+ women behind.
🏳️🌈 Progress Came With a Fight
August 26 also reminds us that progress has not always moved forward.
On August 26, 1985, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled in Baker v. Wade to uphold Texas’ law criminalizing consensual same-sex intimacy.
It is an important reminder of just how recently LGBTQ+ Americans could be treated as criminals simply because of whom they loved.
Then, decades later, another August 26 represented acknowledgment.
On August 26, 2019, San Francisco Police Chief William Scott formally apologized for the police department’s historic harassment and mistreatment of the LGBTQ+ community.
Think about that journey.
1966: LGBTQ+ people resist police harassment.
1985: Same-sex intimacy is still being criminalized.
2019: A police department formally acknowledges and apologizes for its history of mistreatment.
That is why knowing our history matters.
That's legacy.
I Am Me Inc has been telling you for years, WE'VE BEEN HERE!!
Know Your history!
Respect the legacy!
Keep building the future!
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