The story still resonates: More than 60 years ago, Los Angeles police officers were routinely harassing the gay and transgender people who gathered at Cooper Do-nuts, a 24-hour spot in the city’s seedy gay circuit known as the Run.
Then one evening in May 1959, some fed-up drag queens, hustlers and other customers pushed back, barraging officers with hot coffee and half-eaten crullers.
Outnumbered, the police fled but called for backup, and arrests were made. John Rechy, author of the landmark 1963 gay novel “City of Night,” has recalled seeing coffee cups fly.
The Cooper Do-nuts melee has long been noted as a gay uprising a full 10 years before the more famous June riot outside the Stonewall Inn in New York City.