Stonewall Book Awards for 2010

June is Pride Month! With parties, concerts, films and parades the GLBT community celebrates their diversity and the great history of American tolerance.  In 1971, The American Library Association began recognizing the contributions of GLBT literature by awarding it’s Stonewall Book Award.

The Stonewall Book Awards are given annually to English-language books of exceptional merit relating to the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered experience.

Education and knowledge are the best weapons against hatred and intolerance.  (Visit the Southern Poverty Law Center for a list of hate groups in Massachusetts). Come to the library – read, check out films or visit the Give a Damn campaign. If you want to join the parties you can! Boston Pride is celebrating 40 years of progress with a full calendar of events.

Today in history …

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Late in the afternoon of March 5, 1770, British sentries guarding the Boston Customs House shot into a crowd of civilians killing three and injuring eight others, two of them mortally. Surrounded by jeering Bostonians slinging hard-packed snowballs, the small group of soldiers lost control when one of their number was struck. They fired despite explicit orders to the contrary.

African-American sailor Crispus Attucks was the first to fall. Attucks’ past remains mysterious, but he likely escaped slavery around 1750 and spent the next twenty years working whaling ships. The only victim of the Boston Massacre whose name became widely known, Crispus Attucks was memorialized as the first hero of the American Revolution.

~Library of Congress