Making sure Gay history is NOT forgotten

[William769]

The house and office belonging to recently deceased gay civil rights pioneer Frank Kameny will be added to the National Parks Service's Register of Historic Places Nov. 2, according to Mark Meinke, founder of the Rainbow History Project and one of the people involved in the push to have Kameny's house recognized on a national level.

The Kameny house, located at 5020 Cathedral Ave. NW, will become the only LGBT historic site listed in the register, which contains 80,000 other historic sites across the country, says Meinke. Among the more select group of 2,500 national historic landmarks, only New York's Stonewall Inn has any relation to LGBT history.

Meinke says the effort to add the Kameny house to the register began in 2003. First, however, Rainbow History and local activists had to get the house listed as a D.C. historic landmark, which happened in February 2009.

Meinke says that major occurrences in LGBT history are relatively recent, meaning there has been less time to analyze proposed sites from a historical perspective, explaining one reason the designation of Kameny's house is so rare.

http://www.metroweekly.com/news/?ak=6709

[xchrom]

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