What do an original rainbow flag, a life-size photo of Marsha P. Johnson, and the gavel that ended ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ have in common?
The flag has eight stripes, not six, and it’s signed by its designer, the self-styled “gay Betsy Ross,” Gilbert Baker.
Other treasures include Harvey Milk campaign posters and the gavel Nancy Pelosi banged to mark the repeal of the military’s “don’t ask don’t tell” policy, which required that LGBTQ service members hide their sexual orientations.
There’s Martina Navratilova’s tennis racket, and the plaid jacket Ohioan Jim Obergefell wore in 2013 when he married his dying partner John Arthur on a chartered medical plane. The pair had flown to Maryland, where same-sex marriage was legal.
The traveling “Rise Up: Stonewall and the LGBTQ Rights Movement” exhibit at the Illinois Holocaust Museum is a spirited recap of the modern LGBTQ civil rights movement, told via photos, news clippings, protest pins, interactive kiosks and short documentaries. You’ll see photos of Chicago’s first Pride Parade in 1970 — blown up to almost life-size — and look transgender rights pioneer Marsha P. Johnson right in the eye.
You’ll chuckle at congressman Barney Frank’s 2012 wedding favor, a Barney & Jim for Congress campaign pin, with “Congress” crossed out so the pin reads “Barney and Jim forever.”
You’ll meet lesser-known pioneers such as Barbara Gittings, a Northwestern student who was “diagnosed” as gay in 1949, at a time when the medical profession still considered same-sex attraction a mental health disorder. Gittings fought back against stigma, picketing the White House and pushing for change at the American Psychiatric Foundation’s 1972 conference.
“I wish this (exhibit) was here when I was a kid,” said Leah Rauch, director of education at the Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center.
“I think it really would have changed a lot for me, and I also wish that people who were not LGBTQ when I was a kid would have gone through this exhibition,” she said. “This is an exhibition for everyone, and specifically, we’re really hoping we have a lot of field trips and school groups coming.”
Rise Up is a traveling exhibit by the Newseum, but the Chicago version is enhanced by nearly life-size photos of the original Chicago Pride Parade and the 2019 Pride Parade.
The exhibit begins with bigoted newspaper headlines from the 1950s, when LGBTQ Americans were mocked, arrested for socializing in bars, and explicitly barred from holding jobs in the federal government. Sexual minorities began meeting in private homes, initially just to socialize safely. But activism followed.
The exhibit includes modest little zine-like magazines from fledgling gay rights groups, including a 1954 issue of One that was seized by the FBI on the grounds of obscenity. The magazine wasn’t sexually explicit, Rauch said, but it did include features such as a short story in which a woman left her boyfriend for a woman.
The editors of One took the case all the way to the Supreme Court — and won, with the court ruling that LGBTQ subject matter is not, in itself, obscene.
“This was a huge, huge landmark case,” Rauch said. “It was the first time the Supreme Court heard any kind of case related to LGBTQ rights. It was a monumental victory.”
A better-known milestone came on June 28, 1969, when patrons at the Stonewall Inn, an LGBTQ bar in New York’s Greenwich Village neighborhood, erupted in a protest that lasted six days. Police struggled with a lesbian, throwing her into a car, according to the exhibit, and “200 furious clubgoers struck back.”
Protesters responded to police shoves with punches. They lit fires and threw glass bottles.
“They were done with police harassment. They were done with meeting in secrecy, and hiding, and trying to create change that way. They were actually going to fight back,” Rauch said.
The next year, New York, San Francisco and Chicago all had marches commemorating the Stonewall protest, but Chicago’s was first, according to Illinois Holocaust Museum vice president of marketing Marcy Larson.
“San Francisco’s was the same day, but because of the time zone, we still win,” she noted.
The exhibit includes a short film with pop culture highlights, including the famous episode from Ellen DeGeneres’ 1990s sitcom in which DeGeneres’ character comes out as a lesbian.
There’s also information about the current struggle over transgender rights, including the battle over gender-appropriate bathrooms. Rauch said it was only in 2019 that New York police Commissioner James O’Neill apologized for Stonewall, and it took until June of 2020 for the U.S. Supreme Court to rule that an employee can’t be fired due to gender identity or sexual orientation.
“While that is amazing, and such a huge, monumental ruling, it is still something we have to think about: that that’s only addressing employment,” Rauch said.
“Half of all Americans live in a state where LGBTQ people could lose their housing, or they could be denied service at a restaurant or a business, because of being LGBTQ. They could be denied a home loan as well.”
