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Join The 19th’s Amanda Becker on Monday, June 15, at 1 p.m. ET for a live conversation with Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who has led her state’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. RSVP to submit your questions for Whitmer ahead of the convo!
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Greetings, 19th friends!
We’re thrilled to welcome our latest hire: Clarice Bajkowski, The 19th’s new creative director. Clarice has spent the past 15 years executing award-winning creative for big brands and small shops. She’ll help guide the growth of The 19th’s brand, visualizing our work across products and platforms. A San Antonio native, Clarice now claims Austin as home. Her first day with The 19th is June 8. Join us in welcoming Clarice!
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A mural in Astoria, N.Y. depicts activists Marsha P. Johnson, left, and Sylvia Rivera. (AP Photo/Julia Weeks)
HERE'S THE T
June’s Pride celebrations were first stymied by the pandemic; now, streets that usually host colorful parades feting the LGBTQ+ community are filled with protesters. The timing and tenor of today’s unrest have prompted comparisons to another protest against police abuses: the 1969 Stonewall riots, a seminal moment in LGBTQ+ history.
- In the early hours of June 28, 1969, the police raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay club in New York City’s Greenwich Village.
- Police raids and violence toward the LGBTQ+ community were common, but on that particular night at Stonewall, patrons fought back against the harassment.
- The raid prompted days of protests and violent clashes with law enforcement, and created a galvanizing moment for the LGBTQ+ rights movement.
But often erased from Stonewall’s history are the trans women of color who were at the center of it. After the dust settled, transgender activists emerged as vanguards of the gay rights movement.
- Marsha P. Johnson, a black trans woman, is often credited with throwing the first brick — or in other versions, a shot glass — at Stonewall. Johnson later said she arrived after rioting was underway.
- Though the specific details surrounding the riot are hotly debated, Johnson and her friend Sylvia Rivera, a Latinx trans woman, are generally acknowledged as frontline fighters at Stonewall.
- Both Johnson and Rivera went on to become pioneering transgender activists. They founded Street Transvestite* Action Revolutionaries, or STAR, which supported young people shunned by their families.
*Editor’s note: The term transgender was not common at the time. Johnson and Rivera referred to themselves as “transvestite,” “drag queen” or “transsexual.”
However, following Stonewall, trans women were quickly pushed to the margins as mostly white gay men assumed leadership in the movement for LGBTQ+ rights.
- Johnson and Rivera were active in the influential Gay Liberation Front (GLF). But within a year of the riots, a separate, more conservative movement, the Gay Activists Alliance, formed in part to center a more respectable image.
- By the fourth anniversary of Stonewall, parade organizers had banned “drag queens.” So Johnson and Rivera marched in front of the official parade banner, just outside of the event.
- The tensions between white gay men and trans women of color still simmer today.
Ahead of the 50th anniversary of the riots in 2019, the City of New York announced that a statue of Johnson and Rivera will be erected near the Stonewall Inn.
- Set to be completed in 2021, it will be the world’s first permanent public monument honoring transgender women.
Neither of the women would live to see their contributions to the LGBTQ+ movement honored: Johnson died under mysterious circumstances in 1992. A decade later, Rivera succumbed to liver cancer. — Abby Johnston
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19th Amendment anniversary will put women on Mount Rushmore, temporarily
By Amanda Becker
Last November, Christina Korp was at dinner in Los Angeles talking with friends about the upcoming centennial of the 19th Amendment, which gave some women the right to vote. The amendment’s 100th anniversary deserved a big celebration, Korp believed, and she knew a bit about marking significant events. Last year, she produced the Apollo 50th Gala at the Kennedy Space Center.
Korp, an entertainment industry veteran, said she wanted to create some type of visual mosaic to honor the anniversary this August, prompting her friend to joke that Korp, a South Dakota native, should put images of women on the facade of Mount Rushmore in her home state. Korp took it seriously.
In late August and early September, Korp’s project, “Look Up to Her,” will become one of a number of ways the Women’s Suffrage Centennial Commission will mark the anniversary, along with a commemorative coin and medal produced by the U.S. Mint and a virtual event at the Kennedy Center. She’ll project the images of 14 female leaders of the suffrage and civil rights movements on Mount Rushmore, including women who never themselves got the right to vote.
For two weeks, Abigail Adams, Sojourner Truth, Clara Barton, Harriet Tubman, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Ida B. Wells, Alice Paul, Jeannette Rankin, Gladys Pyle, Mabel Ping-Hua Lee, Zitkala-Sa, Nellie Tayloe Ross and Rosa Parks will be projected in pairs flanking Mount Rushmore’s four presidents — George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt — in several-minute increments.
Read the full story.
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NI UNA MENOS
Five years after Argentine women declared #NiUnaMenos (not one less), violence against women in the country — and across Latin America — remains staggering. One in three women in the region have faced violence, a problem that has been compounded under strict COVID-19 lockdown measures.
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 What we're reading
Pandemic could scar a generation of working mothers. Women have shouldered the bulk of domestic work and child care during the pandemic. The gradual reopening of states is unlikely to solve their problems. (New York Times, June 3)
Breonna Taylor's friends and family remember her greatness. Friends and family of Breonna Taylor, the woman who was killed by police in Louisville, discuss her legacy. She would have been 27 today. (Teen Vogue, June 5)
Women candidates won big in June primaries. June 2 was a big day for women candidates. In House races in New Mexico, Indiana and Iowa, both major parties will be represented by women on the ticket this fall. (Vox, June 3)
Army to place women in last all-male infantry, armor companies. Female infantry are finally infiltrating the Army’s last all-male brigade combat teams. (Stars and Stripes, June 3)
The 2019 college racial and gender report card. For the first time in history, women represent half of NCAA managing directors and directors, but there are still major gains to be had in the world of college sports. (ESPN, June 3)
🎧 Listen: NPR speaks to the friends and family of Breonna Taylor, who say it lifts them up to know her story is being heard — but also makes it harder to grieve.
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