Harvey Bernard Milk (May 22, 1930 – November 27, 1978) was an American politician and the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California, as a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.
Milk was born and raised in New York. He acknowledged his homosexuality in adolescence, but secretly pursued sexual relationships well into adulthood. The counterculture of the 1960s caused him to shed many of his conservative views about individual freedom and sexual expression. Milk moved to San Francisco in 1972 and opened a camera store. After holding an assortment of jobs and frequently changing addresses, he settled in the Castro, a neighborhood that was experiencing a mass immigration of gay men and lesbians. He ran for city supervisor in 1973, but the existing gay political establishment resisted him. Milk's campaign was compared to theater due to his personality, earning media attention and votes, although not enough to be elected. He campaigned again in the next two supervisor elections, dubbing himself the "Mayor of Castro Street". The voter response caused him to also run for the California State Assembly. Due to his growing popularity, he led the gay rights movement in battles against anti-gay initiatives. Milk was elected city supervisor in 1977 after San Francisco began to choose neighborhood representatives rather than city-wide ones. During Milk's almost eleven months in office, he sponsored a bill banning discrimination based on sexual orientation in public accommodations, housing, and employment. The supervisors passed the bill by a vote of 11–1, and Mayor George Moscone signed it into law. On November 27, 1978, Milk and Moscone were assassinated by Dan White, a disgruntled former city supervisor who cast the sole vote against Milk's bill.
Despite his short political career, Milk became an icon in San Francisco and a martyr in the LGBTQ community. In 2002, Milk was called "the most famous and most significant openly LGBTQ official ever elected in the United States". Anne Kronenberg, his final campaign manager, wrote of him: "What set Harvey apart from you or me was that he was a visionary. He imagined a righteous world inside his head and then he set about to create it for real, for all of us." Milk was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009.
Early life
thumb|upright|alt=A black and white photograph of two young children aged approximately six and three dressed as cowboys|Harvey Milk (right) and his older brother Robert in 1934
Harvey Bernard Milk was born on May 22, 1930, in Woodmere, New York, on Long Island. His father is William Milk and his mother is Minerva Karns. He was the younger son of Litvak parents and the grandson of Morris Milk, a department store owner Milk was raised in a Jewish household. His mother kept a kosher home. Although as an adult he did not consider himself a religious person, his connection to the Jewish faith profoundly shaped his worldview. As a child, Milk was teased for his protruding ears, big nose, and oversized feet, and tended to grab attention as a class clown. While he was in school, he played football and developed a passion for opera. Under his name in the high school yearbook, it read, "Glimpy Milk—and they say WOMEN are never at a loss for words".
Milk graduated from Bay Shore High School in Bay Shore, New York, in 1947 and attended New York State College for Teachers in Albany (now the State University of New York at Albany) from 1947 to 1951, majoring in mathematics. He also wrote for the college newspaper. One classmate remembered, "He was never thought of as a possible queer—that's what you called them then—he was a man's man".
Early career
After graduation, Milk joined the United States Navy during the Korean War. He served aboard the submarine rescue ship as a diving officer. Milk later transferred to Naval Station, San Diego<!--Do not change the piped name, this was the name of the base in the 1950s--> to serve as a diving instructor.
Milk's early career was marked by frequent changes; in later years he would take delight in talking about his metamorphosis from a middle-class Jewish boy. He began teaching at George W. Hewlett High School on Long Island. In 1956, he met Joe Campbell at the Jacob Riis Park beach, a popular cruising location for gay men in Queens. Milk pursued Campbell passionately. Milk continued to write Campbell romantic notes and poems after they moved in together. Seeking a warmer climate with milder winters, Milk and Campbell left New York in 1957 and moved to Dallas; after they struggled to find employment and were disappointed with the city's social scene compared to New York, they moved back to New York. In New York, Milk worked as a public school teacher on Long Island and then a stock analyst in Manhattan. In 1961, Campbell and Milk separated after almost six years.
thumb|upright|left|alt=A color photograph of Milk in his Dinner Dress Blue Navy uniform|Milk, dressed for his brother's wedding in 1954
Milk tried to keep his early romantic life separate from his family and work. Once again bored and single in New York, he thought of moving to Miami to marry a lesbian friend to "have a front and each would not be in the way of the other".
Milk abruptly stopped working as an insurance actuary and became a researcher at the Wall Street firm Bache & Company. He was frequently promoted despite his tendency to offend the older members of the firm by ignoring their advice and flaunting his success. Although he was skilled at his job, co-workers sensed that Milk's heart was not in his work. Before Milk's thirty-fourth birthday, he entered a romantic relationship with 17-year-old Jack Galen McKinley (b. October 18, 1946). Milk had recruited McKinley to work on conservative Republican Barry Goldwater's 1964 presidential campaign. McKinley was prone to depression and sometimes threatened to commit suicide if Milk did not show him enough attention. To make a point to McKinley, Milk took him to the hospital where Milk's ex-lover, Joe Campbell, was himself recuperating from a suicide attempt after his lover Billy Sipple left him. Milk had remained friendly with Campbell, who had entered the avant-garde art scene in Greenwich Village, but Milk did not understand why Campbell's despondency caused him to consider committing suicide.
Castro Street
Since the end of World War II, the major port city of San Francisco had been home to a sizable number of gay men who had been expelled from the military and decided to stay rather than return to their hometowns and face ostracism. By 1969, the Kinsey Institute believed San Francisco had more gay people per capita than any other American city. When the National Institute of Mental Health asked the institute to survey homosexuals, the Institute chose San Francisco as its focus. Milk and McKinley were among the thousands of gay men attracted to San Francisco. McKinley was a stage manager for Tom O'Horgan, a director who started his career in experimental theater, but soon graduated to much larger Broadway productions. They arrived in 1969 with the Broadway touring company of Hair. McKinley was offered a job in the New York City production of Jesus Christ Superstar, and their tempestuous relationship came to an end. The city appealed to Milk so much that he decided to stay, working at an investment firm. In 1970, increasingly frustrated with the political climate after the U.S. invasion of Cambodia, Milk let his hair grow long. When told to cut it, he refused and was fired.
Milk drifted from California to Texas to New York, without a steady job or plan. In New York City he became involved with O'Horgan's theater company as a "general aide", signing on as associate producer for Lenny and for Eve Merriam's Inner City. The time he had spent with the cast of flower children wore away much of Milk's conservatism. A contemporary New York Times story about O'Horgan described Milk as "a sad eyed man—another aging hippie with long, long hair, wearing faded jeans and pretty beads". One of Milk's Wall Street friends worried that he seemed to have no plan or future, but remembered Milk's attitude: "I think he was happier than at any time I had ever seen him in his entire life." Milk met Scott Smith, 18 years his junior, and began another relationship. Milk and Smith returned to San Francisco, where they lived on money they had saved.
Changing politics
In the late 1960s, the Society for Individual Rights (SIR) and the Daughters of Bilitis (DOB) began to work against police persecution of gay bars and entrapment in San Francisco. Oral sex was still a felony, and in 1970, nearly 90 people in the city were arrested for having sex in public parks at night. Mayor Joseph Alioto asked the police to target the parks, hoping the decision would appeal to the Archdiocese and his Catholic supporters. In 1971, 2,800 gay men were arrested for public sex in San Francisco. By comparison, New York City recorded only 63 arrests for the same offense that year. Any arrest for a morals charge required registration as a sex offender.
Congressman Phillip Burton, Assemblyman Willie Brown, and other California politicians recognized the growing clout and organization of homosexuals in the city, and courted their votes by attending meetings of gay and lesbian organizations. Brown pushed for legalization of sex between consenting adults in 1969 but failed. SIR was also pursued by popular moderate Supervisor Dianne Feinstein in her bid to become mayor, opposing Alioto. Ex-policeman Richard Hongisto worked for 10 years to change the conservative views of the San Francisco Police Department, and also actively appealed to the gay community, which responded by raising significant funds for his campaign for sheriff. Though Feinstein was unsuccessful, Hongisto's win in 1971 showed the political clout of the gay community.
SIR had become powerful enough for political maneuvering. In 1971, SIR members Jim Foster, Rick Stokes, and Advocate publisher David B. Goodstein formed the Alice B. Toklas Memorial Democratic Club, known simply as "Alice". Alice befriended liberal politicians to persuade them to sponsor bills, proving successful in 1972 when Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon obtained Feinstein's support for an ordinance outlawing employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Alice chose Stokes to run for a relatively unimportant seat on the community college board. Though Stokes received 45,000 votes, he was quiet and unassuming, and did not win. Foster, however, shot to national prominence by being the first openly gay man to address a political convention. His speech at the 1972 Democratic National Convention ensured that his voice, according to San Francisco politicians, was the one to be heard when they wanted the opinions, and especially the votes, of the gay community.
Milk became more interested in political and civic matters when he was faced with civic problems and policies he disliked. One day in 1973, a state bureaucrat entered Milk's shop, Castro Camera, and informed him that he owed $100 as a deposit against state sales tax. Milk was incredulous and traded shouts with the man about the rights of business owners; after he complained for weeks at state offices, the deposit was reduced to $30. Milk fumed about government priorities when a teacher came into his store to borrow a projector because the equipment in the schools did not function. Friends also remember around the same time having to restrain him from kicking the television while Attorney General John N. Mitchell gave consistent "I don't recall" replies during the Watergate hearings. Milk decided that the time had come to run for city supervisor. He said later, "I finally reached the point where I knew I had to become involved or shut up".
Campaigns
thumb|alt=A color photograph of Milk with long hair and handlebar mustache with his arm around his sister-in-law, both smiling and standing in front of a storefront window showing a portion of a campaign poster with Milk's photo and name|Milk, here with his sister-in-law in front of Castro Camera in 1973
Milk received an icy reception from the gay political establishment in San Francisco. Jim Foster, who had by then been active in gay politics for ten years, resented that the newcomer had asked for his endorsement for a position as prestigious as city supervisor. Foster told Milk, "There's an old saying in the Democratic Party. You don't get to dance unless you put up the chairs. I've never seen you put up the chairs." Milk was furious that Foster had snubbed him for the position, and the conversation marked the beginning of an antagonistic relationship between the "Alice" Club and Milk. Some gay bar owners, still battling police harassment and unhappy with what they saw as a timid approach by Alice to established authority in the city, decided to endorse him.
Milk had drifted through life up to this point, but he found his vocation, according to journalist Frances FitzGerald, who called him a "born politician". At first, his inexperience showed. He tried to do without money, support, or staff, and instead relied on his message of sound financial management, promoting individuals over large corporations and government. He supported the reorganization of supervisor elections from a citywide ballot to district ballots, which was intended to reduce the influence of money and give neighborhoods more control over their representatives in city government. He also ran on a culturally liberal platform, opposing government interference in private sexual matters and favoring the legalization of marijuana. Milk's fiery, flamboyant speeches and savvy media skills earned him a significant amount of press during the 1973 election. He earned 16,900 votes—sweeping the Castro District and other liberal neighborhoods and coming in 10th place out of 32 candidates. Had the elections been reorganized to allow districts to elect their own supervisors, he would have won.
Mayor of Castro Street
thumb|Harvey Milk buttons
From early in his political career, Milk displayed an affinity for building coalitions. The Teamsters wanted to strike against beer distributors—Coors in particular—who refused to sign the union contract. An organizer asked Milk for assistance with gay bars; in return, Milk asked the union to hire more gay drivers. A few days later, Milk canvassed the gay bars in and surrounding the Castro District, urging them to refuse to sell the beer. With the help of a coalition of Arab and Chinese grocers the Teamsters had also recruited, the boycott was successful. Milk found a strong political ally in organized labor, and it was around this time that he began to style himself "The Mayor of Castro Street". As Castro Street's presence grew, so did Milk's reputation. Tom O'Horgan remarked, "Harvey spent most of his life looking for a stage. On Castro Street he finally found it." More than 5,000 attended, and some of the EVMA members were stunned; they did more business at the Castro Street Fair than on any previous day.
Serious candidate
Although he was a newcomer to the Castro District, Milk had shown leadership in the small community. He was starting to be taken seriously as a candidate and decided to run again for supervisor in 1975. He reconsidered his approach and cut his long hair, swore off marijuana, and vowed never to visit another gay bathhouse again. Milk's campaigning earned the support of the teamsters, firefighters, and construction unions. His store, Castro Camera, became the center of activity in the neighborhood. Milk would often pull people off the street to work his campaigns—many discovered later that they just happened to be the type of men Milk found attractive.
Milk favored support for small businesses and the growth of neighborhoods. Since 1968, Mayor Joseph Alioto had been luring large corporations to the city despite what critics labeled "the Manhattanization of San Francisco". As blue-collar jobs were replaced by the service industry, Alioto's weakened political base allowed for new leadership to be voted into office in the city. In 1975, state senator George Moscone was elected mayor. Moscone had been instrumental in repealing the sodomy law earlier that year in the California State Legislature. He acknowledged Milk's influence in his election by visiting Milk's election night headquarters, thanking Milk personally, and offering him a position as a city commissioner. Milk came in seventh place in the election, only one position away from earning a supervisor seat.
Despite the new leadership in the city, there were still conservative strongholds. In one of Moscone's first acts as mayor, he appointed a police chief to the embattled San Francisco Police Department (SFPD). He chose Charles Gain, against the wishes of the SFPD. Most of the force disliked Gain for criticizing the police in the press for racial insensitivity and alcohol abuse on the job, instead of working within the command structure to change attitudes. By request of the mayor, Gain made it clear that gay police officers would be welcomed in the department; this became national news. Police under Gain expressed their hatred of him, and of the mayor for betraying them.
Outing of Oliver Sipple
Milk's role as a representative of San Francisco's gay community expanded during this period. On September 22, 1975, President Gerald Ford, while visiting San Francisco, walked from his hotel to his car. In the crowd, Sara Jane Moore raised a gun to shoot him. Oliver "Bill" Sipple, a former Marine who had been walking by, grabbed her arm as the gun discharged toward the pavement. The incident drew attention to Sipple. On psychiatric disability leave from the military, Sipple refused to call himself a hero and did not want his sexuality disclosed. Milk, however, took advantage of the opportunity to illustrate his cause that the public perception of gay people would be improved if they came out of the closet. He told a friend: "It's too good an opportunity. For once we can show that gays do heroic things, not just all that ca-ca about molesting children and hanging out in bathrooms." Milk contacted a newspaper.
Several days later, Herb Caen, a columnist at the San Francisco Chronicle, outed Sipple as gay and exposed him as a friend of Milk. The announcement was picked up by national newspapers, and Milk's name was included in many of the stories. Time magazine named Milk as a leader in San Francisco's gay community. President Ford sent Sipple a note of thanks for saving his life.
Race for State Assembly
Keeping his promise to Milk, newly elected Mayor George Moscone appointed him to the Board of Permit Appeals in 1976, making him the first openly gay city commissioner in the United States. Milk considered seeking a position in the California State Assembly. The district was weighted heavily in his favor, as much of it was based in neighborhoods surrounding Castro Street, where Milk's sympathizers voted. In the previous race for supervisor, Milk received more votes than the currently seated assemblyman. However, Moscone had made a deal with the assembly speaker that another candidate should run—Art Agnos. Furthermore, by order of the mayor, neither appointed nor elected officials were allowed to run a campaign while performing their duties.
thumb|alt=A black and white photograph of Milk in a suit with short hair speaking with three longshoremen standing by San Francisco Bay|By the time of Milk's 1975 campaign, he had decided to cut his hair and wear suits. Here, Milk (far right) is campaigning with longshoremen in San Francisco during his 1976 race for the [[California State Assembly.]]
Milk spent five weeks on the Board of Permit Appeals before Moscone was forced to fire him when he announced he would run for the California State Assembly. Rick Stokes replaced him. Milk's firing, and the backroom deal made between Moscone, the assembly speaker, and Agnos, fueled his campaign as he took on the identity of a political underdog. He railed that high officers in the city and state governments were against him. He complained that the prevailing gay political establishment, particularly the Alice B. Toklas Memorial Democratic Club, were shutting him out; he referred to Jim Foster and Stokes as gay "Uncle Toms".
Milk's continuing campaign, run from the storefront of Castro Camera, was a study in disorganization. Although the older Irish grandmothers and gay men who volunteered were plentiful and happy to send out mass mailings, Milk's notes and volunteer lists were kept on scrap papers. Any time the campaign required funds, the money came from the cash register without any consideration for accounting. Milk himself was hyperactive and prone to fantastic outbursts of temper, only to recover quickly and shout excitedly about something else. Many of his rants were directed at his lover, Scott Smith, who was becoming disillusioned with the man who was no longer the laid-back hippie he had fallen in love with. He spent long hours registering voters and shaking hands at bus stops and movie theater lines. He took whatever opportunity came along to promote himself. He thoroughly enjoyed campaigning, and his success was evident. He distributed his campaign literature anywhere he could, including one of the most influential political groups in the city, the Peoples Temple. Milk accepted Temple volunteers to work his phones. On February 19, 1978, Milk wrote a letter to President Jimmy Carter defending cult leader Jim Jones as "a man of the highest character" when asked. Milk's relationship with the Temple was similar to other politicians' in Northern California. According to The San Francisco Examiner, Jones and his parishioners were a "potent political force", helping to elect Moscone (who appointed him to the Housing Authority), District Attorney Joseph Freitas, and Sheriff Richard Hongisto. When Milk learned Jones was backing both him and Art Agnos in 1976, he told friend Michael Wong, "Well fuck him. I'll take his workers, but, that's the game Jim Jones plays." But to his volunteers, he said: "Make sure you're always nice to the Peoples Temple. If they ask you to do something, do it, and then send them a note thanking them for asking you to do it."
The race was close, and Milk lost by fewer than 4,000 votes. Agnos taught Milk a valuable lesson when he criticized Milk's campaign speeches as "a downer ... You talk about how you're gonna throw the bums out, but how are you gonna fix things—other than beat me? You shouldn't leave your audience on a down." In the wake of his loss, Milk, realizing that the Toklas Club would never support him politically, co-founded the San Francisco Gay Democratic Club.
Broader historical forces
The fledgling gay rights movement had yet to meet organized opposition in the US. In 1977 a few well-connected gay activists in Miami, Florida, were able to pass a civil rights ordinance that made discrimination based on sexual orientation illegal in Dade County. A well-organized group of conservative fundamentalist Christians responded, headed by singer Anita Bryant. Their campaign was titled Save Our Children, and Bryant claimed the ordinance infringed her right to teach her children Biblical morality. Bryant and the campaign gathered 64,000 signatures to put the issue to a county-wide vote. With funds raised in part by the Florida Citrus Commission, for which Bryant was the spokeswoman, they ran television advertisements that contrasted the Orange Bowl Parade with San Francisco's Gay Freedom Day Parade, stating that Dade County would be turned into a "hotbed of homosexuality" where "men ... cavort with little boys".
Jim Foster, then the most powerful political organizer in San Francisco, went to Miami to assist gay activists there as election day neared, and a nationwide boycott of orange juice was organized. The message of the Save Our Children campaign was influential, and the result was an overwhelming defeat for gay activists; in the largest turnout in any special election in the history of Dade County, 70% voted to repeal the law.
"Just politics"
alt=Harvey Milk in a jacket is in the center holding a megaphone. A sign behind him says "SAVE OUR RIGHTS".|thumb|Milk speaking on the night of the Dade County ordinance vote
Christian conservatives were inspired by their victory, and saw an opportunity for a new, effective political cause. Gay activists were shocked to see how little support they received. An impromptu demonstration of over 3,000 Castro residents formed the night of the Dade County ordinance vote. Gay men and lesbians were simultaneously angry, chanting "Out of the bars and into the streets!", and elated at their passionate and powerful response. The San Francisco Examiner reported that members of the crowd pulled others out of bars along Castro and Polk Streets to "deafening" cheers. Activists had little time to recover, however, as the scenario replayed itself when civil rights ordinances were overturned by voters in Saint Paul, Minnesota; Wichita, Kansas; and Eugene, Oregon, throughout 1977 and into 1978.
California State Senator John Briggs saw an opportunity in the Christian fundamentalists' campaign. He was hoping to be elected governor of California in 1978, and was impressed with the voter turnout he saw in Miami. When Briggs returned to Sacramento, he wrote a bill that would ban gays and lesbians from teaching in public schools throughout California. Briggs claimed in private that he had nothing against gays, telling gay journalist Randy Shilts, "It's politics. Just politics." Random attacks on gays rose in the Castro. When the police response was considered inadequate, groups of gays patrolled the neighborhood themselves, on alert for attackers. On June 21, 1977, a gay man named Robert Hillsborough died from 15 stab wounds while his attackers gathered around him and chanted "Faggot!" Both Mayor Moscone and Hillsborough's mother blamed Anita Bryant and John Briggs. One week prior to the incident, Briggs had held a press conference at San Francisco City Hall where he called the city a "sexual garbage heap" because of homosexuals. Weeks later, 250,000 people attended the 1977 San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Parade, the largest attendance at any Gay Pride event to that point.
In November 1976, voters in San Francisco decided to reorganize supervisor elections to choose supervisors from neighborhoods instead of voting for them in citywide ballots. Harvey Milk quickly qualified as the leading candidate in District 5, surrounding Castro Street.