A week ahead of the Stonewall Riots’ anniversary, Google has announced a $1 million donation to the LGBT Community Center of New York to digitize the story of the Stonewall Riots.
Google made the announcement over the weekend, noting that Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in Greenwich Village, is widely recognized as the birthplace of the modern LGBT rights movement. In 1969, the bar was at the center of riots between bar-goers and police who tried to take them to jail. The riots lasted several days.
“The Stonewall Riots were important to the ongoing road to civil rights for LGBT communities around the world — and their message is as resonant and necessary today as it was back then,” wrote William Floyd, Google’s head of external affairs for New York and California, in a blog post Sunday.
The grant will help fund the Center’s project to record stories from the riots, which will be available in a park across the street from Stonewall as well as online.
“These are the stories of transgender women of color who fought back; of queer youth, many of whom were homeless, who bravely refused to be silenced; of the poorest of the LGBTQ community,” Floyd wrote.
