Through July 20, 2025

Changing the Face of Democracy

Explore the life and legacy of barrier-breaking Brooklyn-born politician Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman elected to US Congress.
Ongoing

Disability Rights

Activists have continued to mobilize for access to the city’s built environment, created resources to live independent visible lives, and formulated a proud disability identity. In the process, they made a more inclusive city for all, and helped expand thinking about the diversity of human bodies and minds. 
Ongoing

Organizing Chinatown

In the face of daunting barriers and widespread racism, in the 1930s Chinese American workers in Lower Manhattan’s Chinatown demanded improved labor rights, connected with groups in the global anti-imperialist movement, and resisted longstanding, legalized discrimination.
Ongoing

Women’s Liberation in New York

“We’re a movement now,” proclaimed feminist Kate Millett to tens of thousands of women who marched through the streets of New York on August 26, 1970, to demand full gender equality.
Ongoing

When Existence is Resistance

In 1970 Sylvia L. Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson, two participants in the Stonewall uprising the year before, created Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR) to empower marginalized youth and people of color before the term “transgender” was widely used.
Ongoing

Young Lords

“¡Basta ya!”—”Enough!” was the feeling of Young Lords member Mickey Melendez and other East Harlem activists. It was the summer of 1969, and the group had blocked traffic on 110th Street with piles of garbage to protest inadequate sanitation services. They had already asked the city for brooms to clean their neighborhood’s streets and, when refused, they went ahead and took them.
Ongoing

Take New York City Out of the War

On April 15, 1967, as many as 400,000 protesters marched from Central Park to the United Nations to demand an end to U.S. military involvement in Vietnam, with Martin Luther King Jr. leading the way. It was the largest antiwar demonstration in U.S. history to date.
Ongoing

Social Purity

New York City in the late 19th century was a hotbed of debate and conflict over sexuality, including what critics labeled obscenity or “vice.”
Ongoing

#BlackLivesMatter

The 2020 uprisings have brought #BlackLivesMatter back to the center of national conversation. Organized by queer Black women Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi, the hashtag first appeared on Twitter in 2013 as a rallying cry to “recognize the humanity of all Black life.”
Ongoing

Nuclear Disarmament

On June 12, 1982, the largest protest in American history converged in New York, as an estimated one million protestors marched from Central Park to the United Nations to demand an end to nuclear weapons.