Have you ever heard about the Stonewall Riot in school? Yeah, me neither. LGBTQ history is often overlooked in high school history classes and because college history classes are often based off of more individualized subjects, most people won’t learn unless they go looking for it.
In my high school AP U.S. History textbook, there was exactly one paragraph on LGBTQ history and it was about the Stonewall riots. Despite Stonewall being an important historical event, it was only mentioned in passing alongside other protests and aspects of the counterculture in the 60s. Stonewall was a huge event in LGBTQ history, but it is usually disregarded and definitely did not mark the beginning of LGBTQ history.
This week in my Writing History class, we read the introduction to a book by George Chauncey called Gay New York. Chauncey’s book is about the gay community in New York City from 1890-1940. I’ve always been interested in LGBTQ history, but I’ve never found the time to take the extra step and unearth those histories. Even by just reading the introduction to Chauncey’s book, I learned more about LGBTQ history than I ever did in all of high school.
We also talked about the importance of representation in history. We’ve all heard about representation on TV (also super important), but fewer people consider the importance of representation in a history curriculum. In school, we learn the history of white straight men. Gradually, we add women’s history to the mix (white women’s history for the most part). Then, we learn about black history (mostly about slavery, the Abolition movement, and the Civil Rights movement).
The thing I love about history is that there’s always more to uncover, you can always go deeper. The thing that frustrates me about school curriculum is that it doesn’t usually go much deeper than the basics. Our society is constantly growing and evolving and our history curriculum needs to reflect that, but as of right now LGBTQ students are being taught that they have no history or that their history has no importance.
If we continue to actively ignore the history of the LGBTQ community, we are ignoring the fight that came before us. Today, LGBTQ people enjoy relative equal rights with our straight counterparts, but this didn’t come out of anywhere. We still have a long way to go to be accepted into mainstream society, but we enjoy the rights we do today as LGBTQ people because of those who came before us – because of those who fought for our rights, even if we don’t know their names. Sylvia Rivera was rumored to be one of the first people to fight back against the police at Stonewall. We can not forget Sylvia Rivera; we have to actively seek out her and her peers’ histories.
LGBTQ history should be taught in schools because it’s the history of so many people in our society today. Teaching LGBTQ history can help to normalize LGBTQ people in our society today, people who often feel rejected from the mainstream of our society. According to a recent study, about 4.5% of the U.S. population identifies as LGBTQ. To put this number in perspective, that’s about 13 million people. That’s 13 million people who are not being taught their history in schools. 13 million people who felt that much more alone in the world because we, as a society, ignore the history of LGBTQ people.
I wasn’t out in high school and when I went to college, I still wasn’t that comfortable with my sexuality. This had a lot to do with how small the size of the LGBTQ community there are where I’m from, but it seemed even smaller because no one talked about it. I wish we had learned about LGBTQ history in school because it would’ve started the conversation about LGBTQ people, about it being a possibility, instead of ignoring it entirely.
If you’re interested in learning more about the history of LGBTQ people here are a few articles:
- The story of Sylvia Rivera
- The History Channel’s account of the Stonewall Riots
- In Honor of the 50th anniversary of Stonewall, there’s a digital monument dedicated to collecting and preserving stories of the LGBTQ rights movement in the ‘60s and beyond.