Untold Stories: The Park Service strives to tell the history of all Americans, but one group has gone almost entirely overlooked; National Parks Magazine, Summer 2014

Rona Marech, National Parks Magazine; Untold Stories: The Park Service strives to tell the history of all Americans, but one group has gone almost entirely overlooked:

"In 1965, most gay men and lesbians never dreamed of coming out publicly. So when a small group of picketers gathered at Philadelphia’s Independence Hall on July 4 of that year with signs that seemed to broadcast their sexual orientation, bystanders were perplexed. One man instructed his children to hold their noses as they walked by. “But you couldn’t really be gay?” people asked. Some thought that they were actors. Or that it was a joke...

Participating in such a protest could lead to arrest, job loss, social rejection, or physical harm. Yet this determined crew of around 40 marched single file for nearly two hours carrying homemade signs with messages such as “Support Homosexual Civil Rights.” They had carefully selected the location at Independence National Historical Park because they wanted to remind—or inform—the public that gay and lesbian citizens did not enjoy the rights enshrined in the nation’s founding documents. To that end, they called the pickets, which recurred each year through 1969, “Annual Reminder Days.”

Historians consider the picket one of the country’s first organized gay rights demonstrations and view it as a momentous step in the global movement for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) equality. Forty years after that fateful march, the state installed a historic marker commemorating the event. “We marched out of the closet and into American history,” Lahusen says.

But the historic marker isn’t on park property, so millions of visitors pass through the park and never learn about the groundbreaking protest. Finally last summer, park guide Michael Doveton decided to do something about what he considered a glaring omission. During Philadelphia’s gay pride festival, he organized a slide show and talk about the demonstration and the history of LGBT rights, a program he plans to continue this year. Next summer, the 50th anniversary of the original protest, a temporary exhibit on gay rights in 1960s America will open at the National Constitution Center.

“We owe it to the public to tell these stories, to tell this history,” Doveton says. “We love to talk about the beautiful moments of the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution but we also talk about some of our shortcomings as well. That’s important because that’s what makes us who we are as a people, as a culture, as a nation. That’s our history. Both the shining and the dark moments.”

Doveton is not a rogue employee. He isn’t fighting against a current. In fact, he was backed by his superiors, all the way to the top reaches of the National Park Service administration, where the call to document LGBT history has been noticeably amplified in recent years. In drips and drabs, park employees are revisiting existing sites to incorporate LGBT history that had been overlooked or actively obscured. At the same time, the Park Service is actively seeking places with a vital connection to gay and lesbian history to add to the National Register of Historic Places or the National Historic Landmark (NHL) program.

The Park Service hasn’t done a great job telling LGBT stories in the last 30 years, says Alexandra Lord, the branch chief for the NHL program, which recognizes sites of national significance. “Now we’re looking to tell this story much more aggressively,” she says.

The attitude within the Park Service reflects a much larger shift—even a groundswell—in the world of public history."