Grant Spotlight: Stonewall Library and Archives
![Interior of the Stonewall Inn bar](/sites/default/files/images/060124_stonewall_srlmediainc-17.jpg)
Recreation of the Stonewall Inn from the morning of June 28, 1969, which is part of the Stonewall Library and Archives' Stonewall "Inn" Stonewall exhibit. Photo by Robert Kesten
Recreation of the Stonewall Inn from the morning of June 28, 1969, which is part of the Stonewall Library and Archives' Stonewall "Inn" Stonewall exhibit. Photo by Robert Kesten
Lin-Manuel Miranda: I think anything that connects us to the founding in a real way-- like I think for me the joy in researching this show and writing it was being forced to find the humanity in the founders. I have to find my way into them to write their songs. That's the only way I know how to write, is I have to put their clothes on and figure out what they're thinking and what they're feeling, and then when it feels true I write it down and I think what is touching a nerve is, I think other people are finding the humanity within them as well. They leave with an understanding, or at least a partial understanding, of what they were like as people in some weird way, or they have their head around them in a way that you don't get when you look at a statue of someone. I think, regardless of your political stripe, to be connected to your country in any meaningful way, or its country's founders-- even if you leave being like, "Oh, Jefferson was a jerk," or "Hamilton cheated on his wife," to make them human you can't dismiss them, and you have to reckon with them, because we live in their country.
Erica Tremblay (Seneca-Cayuga). Photo by Lilac Milk