President Barack Obama is preparing to name Stonewall Inn in New York City the first national monument to gay rights.
Interior Secretary Sally Jewell and the head of the National Park Service will travel to New York Monday for meetings on the proposal, the Washington Post reports.
Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., will also attend these meetings, which will include a “listening session” to hear feedback on the proposal. If no complications or municipal concerns arise, the president is prepared to make his announcement as soon as next month.
The inn is the location of 1969 gay rights riots, seen by many historians as kicking off the national gay rights movement that would mature and succeed decades later. The 1960 s are noted for national movements for civil and gender rights, but they closed with the genesis event of the American gay rights movement in June 1969.
Police raided the Stonewall Inn, a known hotspot for gay men in Greenwich Village, on June 28, 1969. Protests quickly ensued and continued for six days. Many protesters and police officers were injured, but no one was killed.
Nearby witness Bob Kohler described the scene to historian David Carter, which was included in Carter’s 2004 book, “Stonewall: The Riots That Sparked the Gay Revolution.”.
“I had been in enough riots to know the fun was over… The cops were totally humiliated. This never, ever happened. They were angrier than I guess they had ever been, because everybody else had rioted,” Kohler recalled.
“But the fairies were not supposed to riot… no group had ever forced cops to retreat before, so the anger was just enormous. I mean, they wanted to kill,” Kohler continued.
Police raids were common on gay establishments at this time, but the police unusually lost control of the situation during the Stonewall incident. The following year, on June 28, 1970, the first Gay Pride marches took place in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco.
The Stonewall Inn has already received official landmark status from the New York Landmarks Preservation Commission.
The bar is still in operation today in half of its original space.
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Stonewall Inn Likely to Receive Landmark Status by Obama originally appeared on usnews.com
