The most memorable place on my tour was seeing the Stonewall Inn. While I’d visited before, it was usually as a bar, and not a historical site. As a member of the LGBTQ community, I felt that this was a particularly emotional point of the tour for me. Hearing about how the first brick was thrown by a black transgender activist, Martha P Johnson, made me realize how much the community owes to our transgender brothers and sisters, in addition to members of the community who are people of color. The general face of the LGBTQ movement is usually that of a white gay cisgendered male, and the historical context of the origins of the Stonewall Riots made me appreciate the seemingly unknown leaders of the movement.
It was also really fascinating to me that the riots were the truly the beginning of social progress for LGBTQ rights. I learned on my tour that several LGBTQ newspapers and activist groups were created shortly after the riots. Though it wasn’t in the 1960s, I also learned that the first Pride Parade was in 1970, and was heavily influenced by the activist organizations and notions of empowerment created by the Stonewall Riots.
While I felt many emotions of pride and appreciation visiting the site, my tour guide also helped put it in context with today’s politics. In the 1960s, the FBI gathered information and kept a list of known members of the LGBTQ community and their associates. While this seems unconstitutional and heinous to us now, my mind instantly jumped to the lists compiled by the US currently on illegal immigrants and Muslim people. I can only hope that in the way that we look back on the way LGBTQ people were treated in the 1960s and are in shock at how cruel and unjust it was, we will soon be able to look this current era and think about how wrong it was.
