Harvey Milk (1977-1978): His Election and Assassination

Harvey Milk was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in November 1977, becoming one of the first openly gay people to win public office in the United States. In less than a year in office he helped pass a city gay rights law and led opposition to a statewide plan to fire gay teachers. On 27 November 1978 he and Mayor George Moscone were shot dead at City Hall by a former supervisor, Dan White, and Milk became a lasting symbol of the gay rights movement.

Background: from New York to the Castro

Milk was born on 22 May 1930 in Woodmere, New York, served in the US Navy during the Korean War era and worked in insurance and finance. For most of his early life he kept his sexuality private, as did most gay Americans of the time.

In 1972 he moved to San Francisco and opened Castro Camera on Castro Street, in a neighbourhood that was becoming the centre of the city’s gay community. He became a spokesman for local small businesses and gay residents, and was nicknamed the “Mayor of Castro Street”.

The road to election

Milk ran for supervisor in 1973 and 1975 and for the California State Assembly in 1976, losing each time but building a following. In 1976 Mayor George Moscone, a liberal Democrat, appointed him to the city’s Board of Permit Appeals, making him one of the first openly gay city commissioners in the country, though he was soon dismissed for running for the Assembly.

In 1976 San Francisco voters approved a switch from citywide to district elections for supervisors, giving neighbourhoods their own representatives. On 8 November 1977 Milk won the District 5 seat, which included the Castro. He was sworn in on 9 January 1978, as part of the most diverse board the city had yet elected.

In office

Milk’s main achievement was a city ordinance banning discrimination in housing, employment and public accommodation on the grounds of sexual orientation. The board passed it in March 1978 with Dan White the only supervisor voting against, and Moscone signed it into law in April. Milk also championed neighbourhood issues, including a well-publicised law requiring dog owners to clean up after their pets.

He argued that gay people must come out to family, friends and colleagues, believing that personal knowledge would break down prejudice. In a tape he recorded in case he was killed, he said, “If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door.”

The fight against the Briggs Initiative

In 1977 the singer Anita Bryant led a successful campaign to repeal a gay rights ordinance in Dade County, Florida, and similar repeals followed elsewhere. In California, state senator John Briggs put Proposition 6 on the November 1978 ballot. It would have required public schools to dismiss gay and lesbian teachers, and anyone who publicly supported gay rights.

Milk debated Briggs across the state and helped organise opposition. The measure also drew opposition from conservatives, including the former governor Ronald Reagan, who argued publicly that it was unnecessary and could cause real harm. On 7 November 1978 voters rejected Proposition 6 by about 58 to 42 per cent.

The assassinations

Dan White, a former police officer and firefighter, represented District 8. On 10 November 1978 he resigned, citing financial pressures, but days later asked Moscone to reappoint him. Milk and others lobbied the mayor against it, and Moscone decided to appoint someone else.

On the morning of 27 November 1978, the day the new appointment was to be announced, White entered City Hall through a basement window to avoid the metal detectors. He shot Moscone several times in the mayor’s office, reloaded, walked to the supervisors’ offices and shot Milk. White later turned himself in to police.

Dianne Feinstein, president of the Board of Supervisors, announced the killings to reporters and became mayor. That evening a silent candlelight march of tens of thousands of people, often estimated at 25,000 to 40,000, walked from the Castro to City Hall. The killings came just nine days after the deaths of more than 900 members of the Peoples Temple, a movement based in San Francisco, at Jonestown in Guyana, which had already shaken the city.

Trial and the White Night riots

White was tried for murder in 1979. His defence argued that depression had diminished his capacity to premeditate. A psychiatrist mentioned that White had eaten junk food such as Twinkies as a sign of his depression, giving rise to the misleading phrase “Twinkie defence”.

On 21 May 1979 the jury convicted White of voluntary manslaughter. That night thousands protested at City Hall, and the “White Night riots” saw police cars burned and many people injured; police later raided a bar in the Castro. White was sentenced to seven years and eight months, served about five, and died by suicide in October 1985. California later abolished the diminished capacity defence.

Key people

George Moscone, a former state senator, had been elected mayor in 1975 with strong support from minorities, unions and the gay community. He favoured district elections and appointed many members of under-represented groups to city commissions, which made him a target for some conservatives in the city.

Dan White, aged 32 at the time of the killings, was a Vietnam War veteran who had campaigned as a defender of traditional family values and the city’s working-class neighbourhoods. He often clashed with Milk on the board, notably over a facility for troubled youths in his district, and he struggled to support his family on the supervisor’s small salary.

Dianne Feinstein, who found Milk’s body, became mayor after the killings and held the office until 1988. She later served for three decades as a United States senator for California.

Legacy

Milk became the most famous gay politician in American history. The documentary The Times of Harvey Milk won the Academy Award in 1985, and the 2008 film Milk earned Sean Penn the Oscar for best actor. In 2009 President Barack Obama awarded Milk the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously, and since 2010 California has marked 22 May as Harvey Milk Day.

His career built on the momentum of the Stonewall riots and the American Psychiatric Association’s 1973 decision that homosexuality was not a mental illness. His call for visibility shaped the activism that followed, including the AIDS protests of ACT UP.

Timeline

• 22 May 1930: Harvey Milk is born in Woodmere, New York.
• 1972: Milk moves to San Francisco and opens Castro Camera.
• 8 November 1977: Milk is elected supervisor for District 5.
• 9 January 1978: Milk is sworn in.
• March–April 1978: The city’s gay rights ordinance is passed and signed into law.
• 7 November 1978: California voters reject Proposition 6, the Briggs Initiative.
• 27 November 1978: Dan White kills Mayor George Moscone and Harvey Milk at City Hall.
• 21 May 1979: White is convicted of voluntary manslaughter; the White Night riots follow.

Why it matters

Harvey Milk’s election showed that openly gay candidates could win office, and his campaign against the Briggs Initiative helped defeat one of the first major anti-gay ballot measures in the United States. His assassination made him a martyr, and his message that gay people should live openly became central to the movement for equal rights.