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DTLA Gets New Square Honoring Cooper Do-nuts And Nancy Valverde, Two Local LGBTQ+ Icons
The Cooper Do-nuts shop on Main Street in 1958.
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Courtesy Cooper Do-nuts and the Evans family
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The Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously on Wednesday to designate the intersection of 2nd and Main Street in downtown L.A. as “Cooper Do-nuts / Nancy Valverde Square” — a move that honors a historical LGBTQ+ place and figure.
What was Cooper Do-nuts?
Cooper Do-nuts was known as a welcoming place in the 1950s for gender-nonconforming and gay people to have late-night hangouts, a rare thing for a business to allow because of a citywide ban on cross dressing between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m.
The site may be where the first LGBTQ+ uprising took place in May 1959, as patrons threw coffee cups and more at officers trying to arrest a group of drag queens, gay men and sex workers.
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Who is Nancy Valverde?
Valverde is one of the people who frequented Cooper Do-nuts. She was routinely arrested for violating the cross-dressing ban, Ordinance 5022, and served time for it in the Lincoln Heights jail.
According to the motion, Valverde went to court to justify her right to wear masculine clothing and is credited with paving the way for the end of the ban.
About that uprising
There is debate about whether the small uprising actually happened at Cooper’s Do-nuts. The event was only recorded by novelist John Rechy in City of Night, who claims to have witnessed an uprising with varying accounts on location and date.
The family behind the donut shop can’t vouch either way, as the New York Times reported. Keith Evans, a grandson of the owner, said at the council meeting that the shop was a safe haven for LGBTQ+ people.
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