The world’s first monument to transgender activists, announced Wednesday in New York City, will pay tribute to two women of color, Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, for their roles in leading the gay rights movement.
The permanent installation will be on display in Greenwich Village, not far from the Stonewall Inn, site of the June 1969 Stonewall Uprising in which LGBT activists fought back against police who raided the popular gay bar. Johnson and Rivera are considered critical figures in the uprising—which is widely believed to be the beginning of the modern gay rights movement—but for decades their contributions had been marginalized, if not altogether erased, from mainstream narratives.
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In fact, as the New York Times reports, a monument already exists paying tribute to the Stonewall Uprising, in a park just across the street from the historic bar, but the four figures it depicts—two men and two women, all painted white—don’t even hint at the contributions of trans women or people of color like Johnson and Rivera, who were at the vanguard of the gay rights movement.
Source: New York City to Honor Revolutionary Trans Activist Marsha P. Johnson With Monument
