The District was originally named Compton's Transgender Cultural District after the historic August 1966 Compton's Cafeteria Riot, one of the first demonstrations of transgender resistance in the United States. The riot was a response to the police harassment of transgender and gender-non-conforming individuals, particularly transgender women.Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton's Cafeteria (documentary film by Victor Silverman and Susan Stryker, 2005) Cross-dressing was illegal at the time due to anti-masquerading laws, which was the basis for a lot of police brutality and harassment of transgender women. A trans woman interviewed in the documentary Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton's Cafeteria could get arrested for having the buttons on the "wrong" side (i.e. the left side of the shirt, where buttons tend to be placed on women's clothing). Although the riot was undocumented in newspapers, the Compton's Cafeteria Riot was "rediscovered" and popularized by Susan Stryker in her 2015 film Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton's Cafeteria, which ultimately led to the creation of The Transgender District.
