BY ANDY HUMM | The momentum for declaring the area outside the Stonewall Inn a national monument overseen by the National Park Service seems headed for an inevitable conclusion, with all the political, L.G.B.T. rights movement and community forces aligned in its favor at a May 9 public hearing at P.S. 41 in Greenwich Village.
The hearing was chaired by Congressmember Jerry Nadler, who is widely credited with coordinating support for the designation. Nadler was joined by U.S. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell and Jonathan Jarvis, the National Parks Service director.
The Inn, site of the 1969 Stonewall Rebellion that sparked the modern L.G.B.T. rights movement, would be the first national park designated because of its significance to gay history if — as expected — Jewell recommends that President Barack Obama use his powers under the Antiquities Act to declare it a monument by the 47th anniversary of the uprising late next month.
A national monument designation for Christopher Park would serve as the anchor for a larger national park area incorporating surrounding streets.
Nadler opened the proceedings by saying he was “confident” the president would act, given that the other route to a national park — Congressional legislation sponsored by him and New York’s two senators, Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand — is unlikely to pass with Republicans in charge of both houses.
The small triangular Christopher Park across the street from the bar has been transferred to the federal government as the result of a City Council resolution sponsored by Councilmember Corey Johnson, support from the de Blasio administration, and legislation quietly and unanimously passed in Albany through the leadership of Assemblymember Deborah Glick and state Senator Brad Hoylman, who represent the area, and signed by Governor Andrew Cuomo last month.
Johnson, Glick and Hoylman, who are openly gay, along with City Comptroller Scott Stringer, Public Advocate Letitia James and Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer, spoke at a press conference Nadler held just prior to the hearing to announce the final push for the monument’s designation.
James, who noted she is the first African-American woman elected citywide, said, “The Stonewall Inn represents to the L.G.B.T. community what Selma represents for the civil rights movement and Seneca Falls represents for the women’s movement,” echoing Obama’s own linking of these three historic places in his second inaugural address in 2013.
Jewell, in opening remarks at the hearing, said she was in eighth grade when the Stonewell Rebellion happened and “oblivious to the struggles” of L.G.B.T. people, as were most Americans at the time. She noted that in 1969 “two people of the same sex could be arrested for dancing together” or for “wearing clothes of the other gender, so I’m inappropriately dressed,” by that standard, she said, given her pants and suit-jacket ensemble.
While Christopher Park –– which already includes George Segal’s “Gay Liberation” statues of a male couple and a female couple, both painted solid white –– will anchor Stonewall National Park, the spot’s appearance is not likely to change much other than in terms of signage. However, the Stonewall Veterans’ Association — a group run by Williamson Henderson, who has long made widely disputed claims, for which no police or court records exist, of having been arrested during the uprising — was pushing an elaborate redesign at the Nadler hearing. Friends of Christopher Park, a volunteer group, will continue its unpaid efforts at maintaining the park, and the city will continue to contribute to upkeep.
During the hearing, Community Board 2 Chairperson Tobi Bergman praised the proposal as “preserving the character of the neighborhood” while celebrating it as “a source of influence on the world.”
Andrew Berman, executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, credited the private and influential National Parks Conservation Association’s push for this park over several years with helping to advance the idea. He noted that the park will not include the actual site of the Stonewall Inn, which is already protected with federal, state and city historic landmark designations, but urged that it be included.
Veteran gay activist Jim Fouratt, however, called the bar itself “a symbol of our oppression” and insisted that “what happened in the streets” is what needs to be commemorated. The Gay Liberation Front, he noted, was formed as a direct result of the Rebellion, making Stonewall distinct from earlier uprisings of L.G.B.T. people in spurring ongoing militant organizing that created a permanent political movement.
While the hearing was contentious at times as witnesses debated who was there, what it meant, and what else should be memorialized, they were unanimous in support of making the area a national park.
Michael E. Levine, 73, said he was in the Stonewall the night of the raid and that it marked a seismic shift in how gay people felt about themselves.
“From that date in ’69, I have been out to everyone I know,” he said.
Gil Horowitz, who said he participated in the Rebellion’s second night, testified that the bulk of those who participated were “homeless youth who hung out in Christopher Park –– thrown out because they were gay.”
Randy Wicker, a gay activist since 1958, said, “There is no such thing as gay rights, there is just human rights.” He urged those creating the monument to fully incorporate the role played by people of color at Stonewall and in the movement that followed.
Transgender activist Josephine Fantasia Perez, who described herself as a daughter of Sylvia Rivera and niece of Marsha P. Johnson, two early transgender street activists of the Stonewall era, made an impassioned plea about the life-and-death burdens that continue to weigh on transgender people. She and other transgender witnesses, such as Mariah Lopez, argued that the Christopher St. Pier in the Hudson River Park, home over the years to many transgender homeless people, should also be part of a national park.
N.P.S. Director Jarvis told the audience at the hearing’s conclusion, “I heard unanimous support. My job is to recommend to Secretary Jewell and her job is to recommend to President Obama that the Stonewall should join the Statue of Liberty and the Grand Canyon” as a national park, not just in recognition of the history of the Rebellion and the role the streets outside the Stonewall played in moments of both trauma and celebration for the community, but to highlight the “continued struggle” for L.G.B.T. rights.
