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"If a bullet should enter my brain, let
that bullet destroy every closet door."
- Harvey Milk |
In 1977 Harvey Milk became one of the first openly gay officials in the United States when he was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Known as "The Mayor of Castro Street" Harvey Milk was a gay rights activist and community leader that was tragically assassinated after only a year of being in office. There have been numerous books and films have been made about his life. For much of his life, Milk had stayed quiet about his personal life, both because in the society of the time he was forced to, and because he simply wanted. Milk knew since high school that he was gay, and even in the wake of an emerging gay rights movement, Milk still chose to remain on the sidelines.
Milk grew up in New York and things had started to turn for him toward the end of his time there when he befriended a number of gay radicals who frequented Greenwich Village. Greenwich Village was the location of the Stonewall Inn which was where the police had the surprise raid on the gay bar that resulted in huge riots from the LGBT community.
Later when Milk moved to San Francisco, his life and outspoken politics evolved even further. In San Francisco, he ran the Castro Camera store, which served both as his residence and as the location of the photography business he ran. Castro Camera still has national significance as one of the most important buildings in the country to be associated with the modern LGBT movement. From 1973-1978 the store served a dual purpose as Harvey Milk's retail photography shop and as Milk's headquarters for his four campaigns for public office. Milk found his voice as a leader and activist. In 1973, he declared his candidacy for a position on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Milk lost the election, but it did not deter him from trying again. Two years later, he narrowly lost a second election for the same seat. But by then, Milk had become a strong political force, known be an outspoken leader in the gay community with political connections that included San Francisco mayor George Moscone and the future US Senator Dianne Feinstein.
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| The White Night Riots |
In 1978 Milk and George Moscone, the San Francisco mayor at the time, were assassinated in the San Francisco City Hall by former Supervisor Dan White. White was upset that Moscone had refused to reappoint him to his seat on the Board of Supervisors, right after White had just resigned. He was also further angered by the fact that Milk had been lobbying heavily against his reappointment. White shot and killed both men and was subsequently convicted of
voluntary manslaughter, rather than first-degree murder. For those who don't know, "Manslaughter is an unlawful killing that doesn't involve malice aforethought—intent to seriously harm or kill, or extreme, reckless disregard for life." White was sentenced to 7 years in prison and only served for 5 of those years. The verdict sparked the start of the "White Night Riots" in San Francisco. It also led to the urban legend of the "Twinkie defense", as many media reports
incorrectly described the defense as having attributed White's diminished capacity to the effects of junk food. White committed suicide in 1985, a little more than a year after his release from prison.
Sources:
https://www.biography.com/people/harvey-milk-9408170
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscone%E2%80%93Milk_assassinations
Harvey Milk's election to public office was not easy. Even though the San Francisco we know today is a bastion of liberalism, the city as a whole was not like this in the 1970s. Harvey Milk was not elected until 1977 because, until then, the elections were city wide. Milk won many liberal votes in the '73 & '75 elections, but without moderates or conservatives, he was unable to win. Then, in 1976, Proposition T was passed. This proposition set new voting district boundaries in SF, consolidating one particularly liberal neighborhood. Through this gerrymandering, Milk was historically elected as the first openly homosexual political official. Luckily, it is not the way Milk was elected but the message his victory sent that was important.
ReplyDeleteSource: https://5clpp.com/2017/02/25/harvey-milk-and-proposition-t-milks-success-and-populist-movements-in-san-fransisco-during-the-1970s/
I think that this post was very interesting. Upon doing further research on the subject, the thing about the assassination of Milk that stirred up the most controversy was the sentencing, which you briefly touched upon. The controversial conviction of "manslaughter" started the White Night Riots. Castro's gay community was outraged over the conviction and subsequently turned their peaceful protest to a violent one. It required the intervention of over 5000 police officers and led to the injury of 124 people. This showed how controversial the conviction was and how big of an issue this was at the time.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.biography.com/people/harvey-milk-9408170
Harvey Milk is such an important and inspiring figure in history, and I have often heard him credited as "one of the first openly gay officials". I began to wonder who the very first openly gay official was, and I discovered it was Kathy Kozachenko of Ann Arbor, Michigan. Kathy was only elected a few years before Milk, in 1974, and she became the first openly gay official to every win US office. For whatever reason, Kozachenko's major step forward for the LGBT community has often been overshadowed by Milk, which some attribute to the fact that she was so casual about her sexuality.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2015-12-11/the-first-openly-gay-person-to-win-an-election-in-america-was-not-harvey-milk
The figure of Harvey Milk is definitely an intriguing and important story. However, I decided to dive a little deeper into the "Twinkie defense" that you mentioned. The "Twinkie defense" term was actually created by the reporters at the time. However, Dan White's defense was that he was mentally unwell due to an unhealthy diet which was beginning to lead him towards depression.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.sfgate.com/health/article/Myth-of-the-Twinkie-defense-The-verdict-in-2511152.php
Great blog! I specifically enjoyed how you detailed the causes and effects of the assassination. Like a good post, it made me curious to see what happened to Dan White after he was given a short sentence if I recall correctly from our lessons. He served 5 years 1 month and 9 days before being released on parol with a radius of inside LA for a year. He then moved to Ireland. He had no personal life anymore and eventually committed suicide. In the end, people said that there were 3 victims in the case. In his notes before suicide he wrote about being sorry for how much trouble his death would cause but never apologized for the murders.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nytimes.com/1985/10/22/us/dan-white-killer-of-san-francisco-mayor-a-suicide.html