The state of Wyoming did not, in October 1998, have legislation against hate crimes. Despite everything that has taken place there, and in the country at large, since, it is one of five states that still lack such laws. The men who met and robbed and beat Shepard—who left him to die of his injuries nearly a week later in a hospital room in Colorado—were instead convicted of kidnapping and murder. They are each currently serving multiple life sentences for a killing that was a hate crime in practice if not in legal classification: The men beat Matthew Shepard, who was gay, because he was gay.

Because of that, Shepard, in his death, became an instant symbol: of bigotry, of violence, of hatred that is at once senseless and tragically consequential. His murder made national news those 20 years ago, horrifying a nation that reliably assumes itself to be better than it is. Lingering outrage about the murder inspired Congress to pass legislation against hate crimes: the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act—Byrd, a black man, had been chained to a truck and dragged to his death by white supremacists in July 1998—signed by President Barack Obama in 2009. Her son had always wanted his life to be meaningful, Shepard’s mother, Judy, would later comment; his horrific death brought a tragic fulfillment to that desire.

Twenty years later, Matthew Shepard remains a symbol of the tragic consequences of bigotry. His family, however, is hoping that he’ll live on in the American historical memory as much more than a martyr. To mark the anniversary of his death, Shepard’s family recently donated a collection of his belongings to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, which houses an extensive collection of LGBTQ-focused objects and documents. The items are currently not being exhibited in the museum’s public halls but are available to researchers; I was given an introduction to them by Katherine Ott, the museum’s curator for medicine and science, and Franklin Robinson Jr., the archivist at the Smithsonian who manages Shepard’s papers.

The items are familiar, even in their specificity. (“He grew up,” Ott put it, “as a typical young queer kid, finding his way.”) There’s the Superman cape, shiny and red and handmade by Judy Shepard, that Matthew Shepard had once worn as a costume. There’s the pair of his sandals, their soles still covered in a thin layer of mud. There’s the 4-H ribbon from the Wyoming State Fair that Shepard had won, Ott told me, for a cornbread recipe he and his mother had developed together. There’s a fourth-place ribbon for a track event. (Of Shepard’s lack of athletic prowess, Ott put it like this: “His parents said, ‘Fourth place—that means there were four people in the race.’”) There’s the small, plush pair of lips with kiss stitched onto them that Judy Shepard would include in her son’s lunch bag every day.

There’s the thick, gold ring Shepard had bought with the intention that one day he would give it as a gift to his future husband. He’d had it customized. “He was a romantic,” Ott said.