The New York Yankees today announced an expansion of their preexisting community partnership with Pride Live (pridelive.org), with the team becoming a founding supporter of the Stonewall National Monument Visitor Center (SNMVC), which breaks ground on the morning of Friday, June 24. For more information on the SNMVC, please visit www.stonewallvisitorcenter.org.
Representatives involved with the creation of the Stonewall National Monument Visitor Center will be honored at Yankee Stadium during pregame ceremonies on Thursday, June 23, as the Yankees celebrate New York’s Legacy of Pride and also recognize the fourth-annual Yankees-Stonewall Scholars.
Those participating in Thursday’s on-field ceremonies will be:
Pride Live, which is a social advocacy and community engagement organization for the LGBTQ+ community, will open the SNMVC in the summer of 2024 at 51 Christopher Street, between Waverly Place and Seventh Avenue South in Manhattan, adjacent to The Stonewall Inn. The center will be the first LGBTQ+ visitor center within the National Parks Service and will offer an immersive experience welcoming all people to explore and experience LGBTQ+ history and culture through in-person and virtual tours, lecture series, exhibitions, and visual arts displays — all on the site of the Stonewall Rebellion of 1969, which gave rise to the modern LGBTQ+ movement.
Building on their previous fundraising assistance in hosting Pride Live guests at Yankee Stadium, the Yankees are proud to be the only team in professional sports to serve as a Founding Supporter for the landmark Stonewall National Monument Visitor Center project, joining entities such as Amazon, Google, Target, the National Football League and others. Additionally, Cashman, Smith and Aryn Sobo, Yankees Vice President of Human Resources, Employment & Labor Law, will be on hand as representatives from Pride Live and the SNMVC ring the NASDAQ Opening Bell on Thursday. Smith will represent the Yankees at Friday’s SNMVC groundbreaking ceremony.
“Our organization is honored to contribute to the founding of the Stonewall National Monument Visitor Center as it becomes a permanent and impactful destination for our friends in the LGBTQ+ community and others,” said Smith. “Having a venue that can both memorialize the history of the Stonewall Rebellion and be a living space dedicated to the advancing the movement toward LGBTQ+ equality will undoubtedly have a profound effect on empowering future generations. Our involvement reiterates the Yankees’ unyielding support of LGBTQ+ rights, and we are excited to see the meaningful difference it will make in educating and inspiring those who visit in the decades to come.”
“We are honored to continue our long-term partnership with the New York Yankees, and we are incredibly grateful for the trust they have in our relationship to work side-by-side to create the first LGBTQ+ visitor center within the National Park Service,” said Ann Marie Gothard, President of the Pride Live Board of Directors. “With support from the Yankees, we will provide an opportunity for all generations to come and visit the site where history was made and where the fight for LGBTQ+ equality visibly shifted with new waves of activism. In our view, this is significant and important to our community, the preservation of the Stonewall legacy, and an integral part of American history.”
Yankees caps adorned with a pride-themed interlocking N.Y. will be sold on-site at the Stonewall National Monument Visitor Center when it opens in 2024 and on the SNMVC website beginning this summer, with all proceeds going back to the SNMVC. Additionally, a percentage of the proceeds from the sale of Brooklyn Brewery’s “The Stonewall Inn IPA” at Yankee Stadium — sold in the Blue Point Bar in the Yankee Stadium Left Field Bleachers — is given to the nonprofit “Stonewall Inn Gives Back Initiative,” which supports awareness campaigns, educational programming and fundraising by grassroots organizations located in communities where progress toward equality has been subject to ongoing acts of discrimination.