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Pride Month

Pride Month

On this page...
  1. Overview 
  2. Events , Exhibitions, and Places to Visit 
  3. Reading List 
  4. Video and Audio Resources 
  5. Resources for Educators 
  6. Hidden Voices 

Overview

June is Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer/Questioning (LGBTQ+) Pride Month! Since it was first recognized on a federal level in 1999, Pride Month has served as a time to celebrate the LGBTQ+ pioneers who fought for equality through art, culture, civic action, community service, and more.

 

"Celebrating Pride Month" written on a navy blue background surround by rainbow ribbon illustrations.

Pride Month also commemorates the anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising, which began on June 28, 1969, after New York City police officers raided The Stonewall Inn—a  Greenwich Village bar frequented by the LGBTQ+ community. Raids like this were unfortunately common because homosexuality was criminalized at the time. However, that night became a turning point in the fight for LGBTQ+ equality when bar patrons and community members banded together to resist the raid. They continued protesting for six days, demanding the right to exist and live openly without fear of arrest.

The next year, in June 1970, bisexual activist Brenda Howard and other local activists organized the first Gay Pride Week and the Christopher Street Liberation Day Parade to commemorate the events at Stonewall. The parade evolved into the New York City Pride March that continues to this day, over five decades later. Howard's original parade has also inspired similar celebrations across the country and around the world.

Today, paradegoers are surrounded by rainbows— a symbol for the LGBTQ+ community since 1978, when artist Gilbert Baker designed the original pride flag featuring eight rainbow stripes. A revised version of his design that features six stripes is now the most-used version of the flag.

Newer designs also take clear inspiration from Baker’s original rainbow flag: the Progress Pride flag, for example, was created in 2018 by nonbinary artist Daniel Quasar, to celebrate diversity and inclusion. Qasar’s design adds a light blue, pink, and white stripe to represent the trans community, as well as black and brown stripes which represent lives lost during the HIV/AIDS crisis of the 1990s and marginalized LGBTQ+ people of color.

The theme of NYC Pride for 2026 is “For All of Us,” which references a quote widely attributed to LGBTQIA+ activist and Stonewall veteran Marsha P. Johnson: “There is no pride for some of us without liberation for all of us.” It also centers justice for the entire LGBTQIA+ community.

We hope you will join us in celebrating Pride Month throughout June and all year long! We encourage you to learn more about LGBTQ+ history and history-makers and their ongoing fight for equality by checking out the resources below, which include events, exhibitions, lesson plans, recommended reading, and more, for use both in and out of the classroom.

Student Supports

New York City Public Schools supports lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer or questioning (LGBTQ+) students, families, and staff across the five boroughs through a variety of policies and programs. For more information, please see our LGBTQ+ Supports page, which also has more information about the Yankees-Stonewall Scholarship for graduating NYC seniors, as well as our Community-Based LGBTQ+ Organizations page. If you have LGBTQ+-related questions or need support at your school, contact [email protected].

Events , Exhibitions, and Places to Visit

Reading List

Throughout the month, and all year long, we encourage families, educators, and students to dive into a book about LGBTQ+ history and experiences. The suggestions below are just a few of our favorite titles, with works of fiction and non-fiction for every grade level that feature characters and perspectives that are often not reflected in other popular works. We hope you will enjoy reading and learning from these outstanding stories.

 

Many of these books are readily available through the Citywide Digital Library on Sora, which provides free access to hundreds of digital e-books and audiobooks for our students, including those in the Come as You Are collection, which features a range of contemporary and historical titles concerning LGBTQ+ topics, characters, and events, including fiction and non-fiction works. 

Pride Month Comics

In partnership with Good Trouble Comics, the NYCPS Civics for All Comics Group has several comics that explore LGBTQ+ history available on WeTeach, including:

Video and Audio Resources

  • The ACT UP Oral History Project is an archive of 187 interviews with members of ACT UP, the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, New York. Founded in March of 1987, ACT UP is a diverse, non-partisan group of individuals, united in anger and committed to direct action to end the AIDS crisis. Its determined advocacy and highly focused demonstrations supported by innovative graphics utterly changed the world’s perception of people with AIDS and queer people.
  • The NYC Trans Oral History Project is a community archive devoted to the collection, preservation and sharing of trans histories, organized in collaboration with the New York Public Library. The archive documents transgender resistance and resilience in New York City.
  • The Village Preservation Society Oral History Collection has a collection of LGBTQ+ Oral Histories that include some of the great artists, activists, business owners, community leaders, and preservation pioneers of Greenwich Village, the East Village, and NoHo, which capture their first-person perspective on the important histories they witnessed or of which they were a part.
  • The Stonewall Uprising Interviews Collection, part of the American Archive of Public Broadcasting’s 2011 American Experience documentary, contains 48 interviews which offer a firsthand perspective on the LGBTQ+ community’s six days of protests that erupted after a police raid on the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village.
  • Learn about the largely hidden history of the LGBTQ+ civil rights movement directly from the voices of the people who lived it in the Making Gay History Podcast series.
  • QueerSpace is a podcast series created by the National Air and Space Museum that features stories and people at the intersection of aviation, space, and LGBTQ+ culture.

Resources for Educators

Hidden Voices

Hidden Voices began as a collaboration with the Museum of the City of New York that was initiated to help NYC students learn about and honor the countless individuals who are often “hidden” from the traditional historical record. Each of the people highlighted in the series have made a positive impact on their communities while serving as outstanding examples of leadership, advocacy, and community service.

In each of our curriculum guides available on WeTeach, students can explore the stories of LGBTQ+ individuals that are especially relevant during Pride Month, including:

In addition to these lessons, we regularly feature profiles on history-making individuals who could be considered “hidden voices.” During Pride Month, check out our profiles on:

  • Edie Windsor, a computer programmer and pioneering LGBTQ+ activist best known for her role in the landmark Supreme Court case, United States v. Windsor, which helped lead towards the eventual legalization of gay marriage in the United States.

You can find more of our profiles throughout the year on our Hidden Voices webpage.

https://www.schools.nyc.gov/learning/subjects/social-studies/pride-month Source: NYC Public Schools