Celebrate Pride Month at the National Constitution Center and learn how members of the LGBTQIA+ community in the United States fought for inclusion by exercising their First Amendment rights and battling the courts throughout history. Meet some famous figures in our exhibits, visit our make-and-take craft station, and learn how using your First Amendment rights can enact change.
Programs at the Museum
Pride & Protests
*Check Visitor Guide for Daily Showtimes
Learn how members of the LGBTQIA+ community in the United States fought for their inclusion by exercising their First Amendment rights to assembly and speech. As activist Harvey Milk once said, “rights are won only by those who make their voices heard.”
Freedom of Speech Button Building
Daily, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
How do you show your support for a cause? Perhaps with buttons, signs, and sashes? Visitors can explore examples of symbolic speech at our make-and-take craft tables and create their own buttons to show their support for a cause and learn how the LGBTQIA+ community used symbolic speech to secure their rights.
The Road to Equality, 1950-2023 Featuring Bob Skiba
Wednesday, June 28 at 12:45 p.m., Grand Hall Overlook and Livestreamed
Register Here to Watch Online
This hour long illustrated presentation begins by examining what it was like to be queer in 1950s and 1960s America, an America where anyone who was at all different was demonized, medicated or arrested. It continues with Philadelphia’s response to this relentless oppression – the Annual Reminder demonstrations that occurred every 4th of July from 1965 to 1969 in front of Independence Hall, the first organized, regularly recurring protests for gay rights in the country. Finally, it tells how the Stonewall riots changed that paradigm for good, morphing those Annual Reminders into and Gay Pride marches and giving birth to the modern LGBTQ movement. Bob Skiba is the Curator of Collections at the John J. Wilcox Jr. LGBT Archives at the William Way Community Center. He teaches a “Queer Culture and Community” class for Jefferson University, writes “The Gayborhood Guru,” history blog and directs the Philadelphia LGBT Mapping Project.
Online Resources
- The History of LGBTQ Rights in America
- Jim Obergefell and Debbie Cenziper: The Story of Obergefell
- Before Obergefell, there was Goodridge: The birth of same-sex marriage in America
- When Religious Liberty Collides with LGBTQ Rights
- The 14th Amendment and Incorporation with Christopher R. Riano
- Looking back at Romer, a key Supreme Court decision about gay rights
- Can Employees be Fired for Being LGTBQ?
- LGBTQ Employees’ Rights at the Supreme Court
