The U.S. could have its first national monument dedicated to the gay rights movement just in time for next month’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) Pride Month.
On May 9, state and federal officials and the U.S. public will consider whether to dedicate a national park to the history of the Stonewall Uprising, which inspired the modern LGBTI civil rights movement in the U.S.
Though land must still be transferred to the federal government and other details will need to be worked out, “the president is expected to move quickly to greenlight the monument” following the May 9 public meeting in New York, the Washington Post reports.
Demonstrations protesting a police raid on the Stonewall Inn bar began in the early morning of June 28, 1969, on Christopher Street in New York’s Greenwich Village neighborhood. Stonewall Inn was then one of the few establishments in the country that welcomed homosexuals. Within weeks of the raid, Village residents had organized into activist groups to establish places where gays and lesbians could be open about their sexual orientation.
In the mid-1990s, the movement for equal rights expanded to include bisexuals and transgender people. Today, it also advocates for the rights of intersex individuals.
President Obama, in his second inaugural address in 2013, numbered Stonewall among places important to the U.S. civil rights and women’s rights movements:
“We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths — that all of us are created equal — is the star that guides us still, just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall. …”
