💜Legends from the Archives: Collette LeGrande in front of Aunt Charlie’s Lounge (2019) 📸 @azhaayanna for @guardian ✨Text by Sam T Levin for @guardian: Collette LeGrande, a 68-year-old performer, recalled visiting Compton’s Cafeteria at age 15: “Meeting some of those girls, I thought they must have to be really strong.” She remembered seeing a policeman drag a trans woman and beat her with a club: “There was not much we could do about it.” In [Susan Stryker’s 2005 film ‘Screaming Queens’], the women talked about being arrested for all kinds of “crimes”, including “female impersonation” and “obstructing the sidewalk.” Their anger at the abuse erupted in the 1966 riot, prompted by an officer putting his hand on a woman at Compton’s. The women recalled throwing sugar shakers through the glass windows and drag queens beating police with their purses. The night ended with overturned tables, a destroyed police car, a newsstand set on fire, and the women hauled off in officers’ paddy wagons. The mainstream erasure of Compton’s from discussions of LGBT resistance is partly due to the exclusion of trans people from the gay rights movement and Pride parades in the years that followed. LeGrande said she still encounters gay men in San Francisco who have never heard of it: “For the average LGB person ... Stonewall is the beginning of the actual movement for them. But for the transgender girls, it’s Compton’s Cafeteria.” . . . . . #legendsofdrag #draglegend #dragicon #dragroyalty #dragworld #dragqueensofinstagram #queerhistory #draghistory #dragherstory #lgbthistory #collettelegrande #auntcharlies #auntcharlieslounge #comptonscafeteriariot #comptonscafeteria #sfdrag #sanfranciscodrag