During a speech at the Human Rights Campaign Gala, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced that the East River State Park in Brooklyn will be renamed after Marsha P. Johnson, a prominent Black LGBTQ activist.
This will be the first state park in New York to be named after an LGBTQ person.
At one point during his gala speech, Cuomo said that “even in New York, attacks against African Americans, Jewish Americans, Muslim Americans and LGBTQ Americans went up by double digits. These attacks are motivated by fear and intolerance against those who are ‘different,’ and they are blind to the commonality of humanity.”
The governor also vowed to change an “outdated” New York State law that bans gestational surrogacy, which allows LGBTQ couples to have biological children.
The announcement comes 28 years after Marsha P. Johnson’s was found dead in the Hudson River. A prominent activist who some say ignited the Stonewall riots, Johnson was heavily involved in the ACT UP! protests against the government’s inaction surrounding the HIV/AIDS epidemic at the time of her death.
Johnson’s death was ruled a suicide but more evidence has emerged in recent years suggesting that the activist was murdered. The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson, a 2017 documentary, deals with the subject in more depth.
