The US National Park Service will begin marking places of significance to the history of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans, a cabinet secretary announced today at the scene in Manhattan of the 1969 riots widely credited with starting the modern gay rights movement.
The shift comes after years of debate about how gay people fit into America's historical narrative and whether they should be included in textbooks.
In 2011, California state legislators passed a first-in-the-nation law requiring public schools to teach students about the contributions of gay Americans in state and US history.
Interior Secretary Sally Jewell's announcement at the Stonewall Inn in the Greenwich Village neighbourhood also comes amid rapid legal changes across America on the issue.
Gay rights advocates have enjoyed a stunning series of court victories, as one state after another sees its same-sex marriage ban fall. The rulings followed the landmark US.
Supreme Court decision last June that struck down part of a federal anti-gay marriage law. It did not apply to bans that were then in place in roughly three dozen states; the high court is expected to eventually rule on that issue.
