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National Park Service removes pages for transgender activists Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera

Sylvia Rivera Marsha P Johnson transgender pioneers protesting in NYC

Rich Wandel via The New York Public Library, Manuscripts and Archives Division; Diana Davies via The New York Public Library, Manuscripts and Archives Division

Sylvia Rivera of STAR (Street Transvestites Action Revolutionaries) at Bellevue Hospital demonstration, Fall 1970 (L); Marsha P. Johnson hands out flyers for support of gay students at N.Y.U. 1970 (R)

NPS removed the pages shortly after scrubbing transgender people from other government websites.

The National Parks Service has removed pages dedicated to historic transgender activists Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera three weeks after it removed all references to trans people from the Stonewall National Monument's website.

The changes, first reported by NPR, include removing the activist's pages as well as those about queer history in Philadelphia, a now-closed Black LGBTQ+ bar in Washington D.C., and a gender-nonconforming preacher who lived during the eighteenth century. The outlet noted that some websites are still up, while others are not. Johnson's picture is still featured, though scrubbed of her biography and achievements.

NPS removed the "T" from the "LGBTQ+" acronym as well as any references to trans people from the official Stonewall National Monument website last month. The erasure follows Donald Trump's executive orders denying the existence of trans people and removing them from other government websites along with LGBTQ+ resources.

Prior to its revision, as recently as Wednesday, the NPS website introduction read, "Before the 1960s, almost everything about living openly as a lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer (LGBTQ+) person was illegal." Now it states, "Before the 1960s, almost everything about living openly as a lesbian, gay, bisexual (LGB) person was illegal. The Stonewall Uprising on June 28, 1969 is a milestone in the quest for LGB civil rights and provided momentum for a movement."

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The 1969 Stonewall Riots — protests in response to police raids of gay bars — are widely credited as sparking the modern-day LGBTQ+ rights movement. “At the forefront of the riots and the early movement were transgender and gender non-conforming women of color, like Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, and Miss Major Griffin-Gracy,” as noted by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law in a 2019 article for the 50^th anniversary.

The federal government has deleted or scrubbed more than a dozen NPS webpages related to LGBTQ+ history since Trump took office, according to the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA). Alan Spears, NPCA Senior Director for Cultural Resources, said in a statement that "staff have poured more than one hundred years of work into preserving, protecting, and interpreting the stories that built our nation," and that the removals make it harder to "maintain an accurate account of history."

“LGBTQ+ history is history, period. It should remain represented at national parks and on the National Park Service website, so that people all over the world can learn about it from the best of the best in the history preservation business," Spears said. “From Marsha P. Johnson to Bayard Rustin to Harvey Milk, LGBTQ+ people have left an indelible mark on our country. Without their leadership, the United States of America might look very different today. LGBTQ+ stories are part of our shared American inheritance, and these changes to the Park Service webpage are nothing short of an attempt to erase history.”

“The National Parks Conservation Association calls upon the federal government to immediately restore these important historical and educational documents for public access," Spears continued. "These efforts to tamper with our history set an unacceptable precedent. What history will they attempt to distort and delete next?”

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