New York State Park to Be First Ever Named for an LGBTQ Person: Transgender Icon Marsha P. Johnson

East River State Park, a New York state park in Brooklyn, will be renamed after the legendary activist and transgender pioneer Marsha P. Johnson.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo made the announcement at a Human Rights Campaign gala in New York City over the weekend.

Said Cuomo: “This year we’re going to name the first state park after an LGBTQ person. We’re going to name it after Marsha Johnson, an icon of the community.”

The AP reports: “Johnson, who died in 1992 at age 46, is considered a pioneer of the movement for the rights of transgender people, although the term transgender was not widely used during her lifetime. Some witness accounts say Johnson was a leader of the Stonewall rebellion of 1969, when patrons of a Greenwich Village bar resisted a police raid and sparked the modern gay rights movement. Johnson and her friend Sylvia Rivera founded the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries, which advocated for homeless gay young people.”

Johnson and Rivera are also going to be honored in a monument near the Stonewall Inn, where riots against police persecution of queer people took place in 1969.