When a great political leader is cut down by assassination, we wonder what might have been. What would President Kennedy have accomplished? Or Martin Luther King? Or Bobby Kennedy? Without a doubt, the LGBT community wonders what might have been with Harvey Milk. Fortunately, iconic figures leave a legacy that continues to benefit the world for many generations after their untimely death. That can be easily said about Harvey Milk.
As we honor his memory May 20 at the third annual Harvey Milk Diversity Breakfast, San Diego reflects upon what a transformational figure Milk was and how he could have only existed in San Francisco.
While Milk is now an LGBT civil rights icon, that is not what he set out to be. Milk graduated from New York Teachers College in Albany, New York. A native of New York State, Milk was called to naval military service during the Korean War. His naval service landed Lieutenant Harvey Milk in San Diego where he was a diving instructor. He returned to New York in 1956 to begin a teaching career.
Milk’s return to New York ushered in his first long-term relationship and a period of discovery. He left teaching and became an actuary for an insurance company and began a six-year-long relationship with Craig Rodwell, who would later be one of the founders of New York City Pride.
While in a series of gay relationships, Milk kept his sexual orientation secret from his family and co-workers in New York. By no means a gay activist, Milk was alarmed by the participation of one of his partners in the Mattachine Society, an early gay rights activist organization.
During the late ’50s and ’60s, Milk pursued positions on Wall Street and was an active supporter of Republican Presidential candidate Barry Goldwater in 1964, who was running against Lyndon Johnson. It was during this time that Milk began a relationship with Jack McKinley, a theatre production stage manager. It was this relationship that created the relationship between Milk and San Francisco.
McKinley was offered a job in a touring production of Hair, which landed the couple in 1969 San Francisco. San Francisco at the time had the highest gay population per capita of any American city and Milk loved it so much that he decided to stay, ending his relationship with McKinley.
To say that Milk embraced the San Francisco lifestyle is an understatement. He took a job at an investment firm, only to be fired for refusing to cut his newly acquired long hair. His firing led to a period where Harvey drifted between California and New York, with an occasional period in Texas where he had previously lived briefly with Craig Rodwell. During this time Milk’s political proclivities changed substantially.
Milk returned to San Francisco and began what would ultimately be his date with history. He opened a camera shop on famed Castro Street after one of his rolls of film was ruined by another proprietor. It was from here that Milk would launch his career in politics. It all began because he was frustrated with a deposit business owners were required to give to the state toward future sales tax obligations. Fed up, Milk decided to get involved in the political system as a candidate. He ran for San Francisco Board of Supervisors.
Milk’s first run was plagued by his political naiveté and his extremely liberal stances, including the legalization of marijuana. While he was a great orator and garnered over 16,000 votes, Milk was defeated. He placed tenth out of 32 candidates for the six supervisor positions. Of note is the fact that Milk overwhelmingly won the Castro District. It was this popularity that led to Milk being known as “The Mayor of Castro Street.”
Using his new found clout, Milk organized a Castro gay bar boycott of Coors to support the Teamsters in their contract negotiations. At the time, Coors was also anti-gay. In return, the Teamsters hired more gay drivers. The success of the boycott helped to solidify the relationship between Milk and organized labor which served him well in his future runs for political office.
The Mayor of Castro Street was also actively involved with the internal struggle between the new LGBT residents of the Castro and the traditional, predominantly Catholic families within the district. In order to show the purchasing power of the LGBT community, in 1974 Milk organized the Castro Street Fair which was a resounding success and helped win over the Eureka Valley Merchants Association (EVMA). The EVMA was concerned that LGBT people moving into the Castro would hurt business. At that time, with over 5,000 people attending, the Castro Street Fair was the most profitable day for district merchants.
Milk still wanted to achieve his political dream of elected office and ran again for the Board of Supervisors in 1975 and the California State Assembly in 1976. While neither of these runs were successful, they both solidified Milk as the titular head of San Francisco’s LGBT community, estimated to be almost a quarter of the city’s population. Harvey also changed his political image and modified the extreme liberal views he espoused.
Not surprisingly, there were a block of LGBT people that were set against Harvey Milk, most notably the Alice B. Toklas Democratic Club and its leader, David Goodstein, who was also the publisher of The Advocate. “Alice” never endorsed Milk, deciding to work with other progressive straight politicians. This rift caused Milk to found the competing San Francisco Gay Democratic Club.
While Harvey was building his political power in San Francisco, the capital of LGBT America, there were broader anti-gay political forces going on in the country. Former beauty queen and orange juice spokesperson, Anita Bryant, decided to become the spokesperson for anti-LGBT hate.
Bryant’s successful “Save Our Children” campaign overturned an ordinance that outlawed discrimination based upon sexual orientation. This success emboldened religious conservatives including California State Senator John Briggs, setting up the conflict that would be Milk’s greatest political success.
Once San Francisco changed the election of the Board of Supervisors from a city-wide ballot to a ballot based upon specific districts, Milk easily won a seat representing the district incorporating the Castro in 1977. He was now officially the Mayor of the Castro.
Meanwhile, California State Senator Briggs introduced a bill that would ban gays and lesbians from teaching in public schools in California. The Briggs Initiative, or Proposition 6, was on the ballot in 1978. The 18 month campaign rallied LGBT Californians to politics and Milk was their leader.
Through the efforts of Milk and a host of others, opposition to the Briggs Initiative mounted. Opponents included former California Governor Ronald Reagan, Governor Jerry Brown and ultimately, President Jimmy Carter.
In November 1978 the Briggs Initiative lost by more than 1 million votes, with more than 75 percent of San Franciscans voting to defeat the measure. Milk’s leadership and reputation were enhanced and solidified his place in LGBT history. Unfortunately, Milk’s date with destiny was already underway.
San Francisco Supervisor Dan White and Milk had many run-ins at City Hall. Milk was not a traditional politician and was prone to make self-effacing comments, proclaiming that he was the city’s “number one queen.” His political independence often put him at odds with other liberal supervisors, particularly Dianne Feinstein.
This independence also caused a rift between him and conservative Dan White. Milk had promised to vote for White’s campaign pet project, only to change his vote at the last minute. White then opposed almost every measure ever introduced by Milk. This may have set up White’s ultimate revenge.
In early November of 1978, Milk was basking in the defeat of the Briggs Initiative; White was unhappy with his supervisor pay and resigned on Nov. 10. Ultimately, White changed his mind and asked for his job back, but Mayor George Moscone refused. A week later, San Francisco was hit with the Jim Jones tragedy, where over 900 people committed mass suicide in Guyana, many of them from San Francisco.
On Nov. 27, 1978 the day that Mayor Moscone was to announce White’s replacement, White entered City Hall and gunned down Moscone and Milk. He shot Moscone four times and Milk five times. He shot each of them twice in the head once they had fallen from the other gunshots. The assassinations were clearly pre-planned by White, a former police officer.
Presciently, Milk had recorded a tape in the event of his assassination. On it he said “I cannot prevent anyone from getting angry, or mad, or frustrated. I can only hope that they’ll turn that anger and frustration and madness into something positive, so that two, three, four, five hundred will step forward, so the gay doctors will come out, the gay lawyers, the gay judges, gay bankers, gay architects … I hope that every professional gay will say ‘enough’, come forward and tell everybody, wear a sign, let the world know. Maybe that will help.”
Ironically, the tragedy made Supervisor Dianne Feinstein a nationally known figure. She famously announced to the nation, “Today San Francisco has experienced a double tragedy of immense proportions. As President of the Board of Supervisors, it is my duty to inform you that both Mayor Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk have been shot and killed,” adding, “and the suspect is Supervisor Dan White.” Feinstein was named acting mayor and the rest is California political history.
Of course, the case against White should have been open and shut. White had turned himself in and admitted to the crime. His attorney mounted a diminished capacity defense, saying that White was out of his mind from eating junk food, infamously known as the Twinkie defense. Believe it or not, White had many conservative supporters in the police department and beyond, despite having murdered the mayor and Milk. The rampant homophobia outweighed the fact that the mayor and an elected official had been executed.
On May 21, 1979, the all white, largely Catholic jury sentenced White to seven and two thirds years in jail for voluntary manslaughter, but acquitted him of all murder charges.
The LGBT community was outraged and rioted at City Hall after the verdict. The infamous White Night riots expressed the grief and dismay the LGBT community felt concerning the incredibly light sentence given White. In response to the riots, police officers raided the Elephant Bar in the Castro and beat many of the patrons.
Dan White served his sentence, but never really recovered emotionally. He committed suicide in October of 1985.
Milk’s assassination, coupled with his history making election in San Francisco and leadership against the Briggs Initiative, has made him an LGBT icon of the highest order. The Academy Award winning movie Milk brought his story to the broader LGBT audience, as well as the mainstream world. President Obama posthumously honored Milk with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009, which was the final jewel in the crown honoring the importance of Harvey Milk in the history of America.
While the LGBT community may wonder what might have been, Milk’s martyrdom created a politically active and focused LGBT community in San Francisco and beyond. Unfortunately, it also created an LGBT political cynicism, because no LGBT leader since has measured up to Harvey Milk. It is hard to measure up to someone who was willing to knowingly die for the cause.
