The National Park Service has announced plans to recognize historical landmarks of the nation’s LGBT rights movement. A study to recognize important sites will begin next month. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell made the announcement outside New York City’s Stonewall Inn, the site of an uprising that helped launch the modern LGBT movement.

Interior Secretary Sally Jewell: “This building, now 14 years ago, was named a National Historic Landmark, and we’re proud of that part of the National Park Service’s role to preserve this part of history, but it’s time for us to do more. So we are announcing that we are going to be launching a theme study next month, the 10th of June. We will be pulling together our nation’s finest scholars, who will help us tell this story effectively for all Americans.”

The Stonewall uprising began the morning of June 28, 1969, when members of the gay community decided to fight back against a New York City police raid on the Greenwich Village gay bar the Stonewall Inn. Leaders of the LGBT community in New York City welcomed the Interior Department’s new initiative.

Glennda Testone, the LGBT Community Center: “It’s incredibly exciting to hear this announcement. I didn’t think that, in my lifetime, a place like the Stonewall Inn will be thought of the way that we think of other landmarks. And so it’s just incredible to see my history honored alongside everybody else’s history in this country.”

Omar Sharif, GLAAD: “You know, LGBT people in this country stand on the shoulders of the people who came before us, people who fought for marriage equality, for HIV and AIDS resources, for employment discrimination and so many other things. And today we honor that, and we protect the legacy of those people. We recognize the places that happened, and we say even buildings are more than just bricks and mortar. They’re institutions of memory.”