OUR SHARED FIGHT
Long before the Stonewall riots of 1969, queer people of all identities were persecuted, harassed, taunted, and sexually assaulted by law enforcement during the 1950s and ’60s. Trans Black women and women of color like Sylvia Rivera, Marsha P. Johnson, and Miss Major Griffin-Gracy were involved in spearheading the Stonewall rebellion, a culmination of an era when raids on LGBTQ+ spaces were commonplace. But it was certainly not the first such event.
A decade before Stonewall, in 1959, Cooper Do-nuts, a downtown Los Angeles doughnut shop popular with LGBTQ+ people, was the location of what is widely considered to be the first queer uprising in modern history. After two Los Angeles police officers attempted.
