During this year’s Pride Month, people across the nation found themselves celebrating in ways like never before. What is usually a month-long event that brings communities together and fills the nation’s largest cities’ streets with parades celebrating the LGBTQ+ community was no longer an option this year. However, needless to say, this restriction on outdoor communal gatherings does not take away from the core meaning behind this celebration—it just allows for new ways to do the same.
Personally, I am always looking to get more educated on this topic, and I learn best by both watching and listening, so I followed my natural instinct and turned to YouTube. Conveniently enough, I didn’t even have to type anything into the search bar because promoted on the homepage is a playlist titled “History of LGBTQ+ Civil Rights Movement”. This was created by the main channel of YouTube, and has 12 short episodes detailing the history of the LGBTQ+ community’s fight for rights alongside the civil rights movement.
One episode, produced by the channel EllenTube, was narrated by Wanda Sykes and takes a cartoon typical straight male through the history of LGBTQ+ in an entertaining and very informative manner. The entire playlist is put together incredibly well, and I would recommend this to anyone who would like to learn more about how long and intricate the history of LGBTQ+ rights has been occurring for. Even in the comments on the first video, some of the viewers were shocked at how they thought they knew before watching, but ended up learning more in the videos. It’s always important to expose yourself to as many sources as possible, especially because of how much we are not taught in school, so I encourage you to take a look at these videos and enlighten yourself so that you can be the conduit of progression for those around you!