In 2016, President Barack Obama ordered 7.7 acres of Christopher Street in New York City to be designated as the Stonewall Monument, the first-ever national monument dedicated to the LGBTQ movement.
Today, with generous support from Google, New York’s LGBT Community Center is launching Stonewall Forever, a digital extension of the Stonewall Monument.
“Stonewall is such a big moment in our history,” Glennda Testone, executive director of New York’s LGBT Community Center, told USA Today. “It is what created the modern day civil rights movement; it’s a symbol for LGBTQ equality around the globe.”
And now LGBTQ people all over the world will be able to experience Stonewall Forever, either on a desktop, mobile or augmented reality app.
Google calls the digital project “a living monument to Pride, connecting diverse voices from the Stonewall era to the millions of voices in today’s LGBTQ+ community.”
William Floyd, head of external affairs for Google, shared with USA Today that “the idea was born out of a question: How do you tell the story of Stonewall in such a way that not only illuminates what happened in history, but it speaks to the activism and a movement going on right now?”
In addition to perusing archived materials like letters, photos, or oral histories, visitors can upload their own memories or experiences inspired by the Stonewall riots to the digital monument.
LGBTQ activist Larry Pfeil calls Stonewall Forever “a dazzling, three-dimension, 360 experience welcoming visitors into an audio-visual collection of individual stories erupting into a virtual rainbow of unity. It’s simply awe inspiring, both for the historical legacy it preserves but its brilliant design and presentation.”
In conjunction with the launch of the digital monument, a new documentary directed by Ro Haber, Stonewall Forever, is being released today as well.
Make sure you visit the remarkable new digital monument by clicking here.
