Posters that read “Silence = Death” from the early years of the AIDS epidemic. A pair of sneakers signed by Ellen DeGeneres, who famously announced, “Yep, I’m Gay” on the cover of Time. A gavel that repealed the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy.
For more than five decades, the Stonewall National Museum, Archives and Library in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., has chronicled the L.G.B.T.Q. community by collecting and sharing its history.
But the museum, one of the country’s oldest such institutions, is facing a hostile political environment and a financial crisis that may force it to find another home.
The organization has been hampered by recent budget shortfalls that Robert Kesten, its president, attributed to President Trump’s ongoing crackdown on diversity programs and anti-L.G.B.T.Q. policies led by Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida. Corporations have also pulled back on sponsorships for national L.G.B.T.Q. groups like the Stonewall museum, which began as a small collection in 1973.
Named for the 1969 uprising in New York City, when a police raid at a Greenwich Village gay bar called the Stonewall Inn set off the modern gay rights movement, the 4,500-square-foot space houses a collection of more than 30,000 books (including some banned at certain public schools) along with DVDs, historical documents and artifacts that reflect the ongoing fight for equality.
Organization officials say they are doing their best to keep the institution’s doors open to preserve the repository for future generations, but it has been challenging.
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