Google Donates $1 Million To Preserve The Historic Stonewall Inn & Stories

Google has donated $1 million to preserve the Stonewall Inn in lower Manhattan.

GOOGLE DONATES $1 MILLION TO PRESERVE STONEWALL INN

Stonewall Inn was the site of an early fight for LGBTQ rights in America. Last year, President Barack Obama named the historic inn a national monument. Now, Google is donating a $1 million grant to New York City’s LGBT Community Center to preserve the inn.

The effort is to not only preserve the actual site, but also to collect stories of those who were there in 1969 and stood up for themselves against brutality and violence toward their community. The project will compile stories to be inserted into an educational curriculum for students, as well as a digital platform to highlight the movement that began at Stonewall.

“The purpose is to spread the word about the Stonewall uprising and the progress we have made as well as the distance we have to go,” U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer said Sunday. “And it sends a great message to Washington, especially in these times: We celebrate our diversity and cherish it, we don’t shrink from it and we don’t fear it.”

William Floyd, Google’s head of external affairs for New York, was inspired to do this project after walking past the important place every day going to and from his son’s school. “This is a living, breathing, active thing,” Floyd he said of Stonewall. “It’s not like Mount Rushmore or a physical natural thing of beauty, it’s civil rights. We thought it was really important that we could provide money and technology to capture those voices and help amplify them.”