Stonewall National Monument was designated a National Park Service (NPS) site just two months after I launched a three-year, nonstop journey to visit all 400+ NPS sites. That project ended up becoming a way to provide the LGBTQ+ outdoors representation I didn’t see when I started my road trip, and allowed me to become the first openly gay man featured in an outdoors recreation ad campaign. As I said when I spoke at Stonewall’s 50th Anniversary just weeks after my parks journey ended (video link below), having Stonewall National Monument helps LGBTQ+ people feel like they are now part of the American Story. Because while the National Archives preserve America’s most important documents, and the Smithsonian preserves America’s most important things, the National Park Service preserves our most important places. And by making Stonewall one of those places, we’re telling future generations that LGBTQ+ Americans play as important a role in our history as all the other people’s stories who are told through our national parks.
Video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4-qo6XsFHc
Sincerely,
Stonewall National Monument
This monument interprets the history of a watershed moment in the modern LGBTQ civil rights movement, when a week-long uprising in 1969 sparked sustained determination among LGBTQ Americans to fight for full equality and civil and human rights.
State(s): New York
Established: 2016
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I finally visited Stonewall in 2018. Who knew it would become a national monument?
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