Kicking Off Pride Month at Green-Wood Cemetery
20160601
By: Amanda Davis
We were thrilled to kick off our first LGBT Pride Month at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn earlier today. Green-Wood is one of the oldest rural Victorian cemeteries in the country, and has long been the final resting place of famous Brooklynites and others from around New York City.
In partnership with Historic Green-Wood, we spent a beautiful afternoon placing pride flags at the gravesites of LGBT notables. The flags will be in place for the entire month of June so we hope you’ll stop by and say hello! You can find the location of each gravesite by using Green-Wood’s online search feature.
Those remembered today include sculptor Emma Stebbins, composers Leonard Bernstein and Louis Moreau Gottschalk, actor/singer/songwriter Paul Jabara, lyricist Fred Ebb, psychiatrist and gay rights activist Richard Isay, and muralist Violet Oakley.
Richard Moyland, President of Green-Wood, weighed in on the day:
“Green-Wood is proud to partner with the NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project in its work to recognize our permanent residents and their contributions to so many important aspects of American life and culture. Throughout the year, Green-Wood strives to honor these individuals by keeping their stories alive and focusing attention on their extraordinary lives with our annual LGBTQ-themed trolley tour coinciding with Brooklyn Pride Week. He continued. This year, the presence of rainbow flags will be a visible and constant reminder to all that our world is richer because of them. We’d like to thank the staff at Green-Wood for taking part in this special event with us. Please be sure to check out their annual “Gay Green-Wood Trolley Tour” later this month.
As we discover more LGBT people buried here we will add it to our Green-Wood Cemetery site page. There you’ll also find photos of all gravesites that we flagged in addition to any we may have discovered after today’s event. If someone is missing from that page that you feel should be included please let us know so we can add their names and honor them at our next pride flagging event. We’d also be happy to flag the gravesites of your LGBT loved ones, whether they were famous or not.
See you next June!
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