Fort Lauderdale reenacts Stonewall uprising to honor LGBTQ+ liberation

Fort Lauderdale’s Stonewall National Museum, Archives & Library brought the 1969 uprising back to life Sunday at 1300 East Sunrise Blvd., staging its third annual Stonewall Uprising reenactment in the heart of the city’s LGBTQ+ civic landscape.

The immersive program started in 2024 and returned at 4 p.m. on Sunday, June 28, as a communal tribute to the night in New York that helped ignite the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement. Museum leaders used the reenactment to connect older activists, younger residents and visitors to the same questions that still shape Broward County today: who is visible, who feels safe and who gets to belong in public life.

Robert Kesten, the museum’s president and CEO, has framed that mission in practical terms, saying history matters because understanding it helps people make life better today and tomorrow. In Fort Lauderdale, that message lands in a county of about 1,981,888 residents and in a city of 189,583 people that remains one of Broward’s largest and most recognizable centers of LGBTQ+ life.

The museum itself has deep roots in that identity. Stonewall National Museum, Archives & Library was founded in 1973 and describes itself as one of the nation’s largest and longest-running LGBTQ+ cultural institutions. Its John C. Graves Library is presented as the largest lending library of LGBTQ+ materials in the United States, with more than 30,000 books, CDs and DVDs. That scale gives the reenactment more weight than a one-day performance: it is part of an institution built to preserve memory, organize public education and keep local history in circulation.

The event also came as LGBTQ+ history faces fresh pressure in schools, libraries and politics. In 2024, the Stonewall Library and Archives received a $10,000 Challenge America grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to support exhibitions and events focused on women, BIPOC communities and transgender people. That funding fits the museum’s broader push to widen whose stories are centered, not just commemorated.

For Fort Lauderdale, the reenactment has become more than a Pride Month stop on the calendar. It is a public reminder that the city’s LGBTQ+ heritage is still being shaped in real time, through museums, archives and the ongoing work of keeping history visible on Sunrise Boulevard.