Harvey Milk

At 48 years old, Harvey Milk has this physical status:

Harvey Bernard Milk (May 22, 1930 – November 27, 1978) was an American politician and the first openly gay elected official in California, where he was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

Despite being the first pro-LGBT politician in the United States at the time, politics and activism were not his early interests; he wasn't open about his sexuality nor politically active until he was 40, after his experiences in the 1960s counterculture movement. Milk moved from New York City to San Francisco's Castro District during a wave of gay and bisexual men in 1972.

He exploited the neighborhood's increasing political and economic prominence to advance his causes and unsuccessfully ran for three times for political office.

Milk's theatrical career earned him increasing fame, and in 1977 he was awarded a seat as a city supervisor.

A key element of a reform in San Francisco politics, a key component of a change. Milk served almost 11 months in office, during which he introduced a bill prohibiting discrimination in public accommodations, housing, and employment based on sexual orientation.

Mayor Moscone signed the bill by a vote of 11-1 and was officially signed into law by the Supervisors.

Dan White, who was then the city's police chief, assassinated Milk and Mayor George Moscone on November 27, 1978.

White had left to pursue a private company venture, but the attempt failed and he needed to recover his old job.

White was sentenced to seven years in jail for manslaughter, but it was later reduced to five years.

He was born in 1983 and died of carbon monoxide inhalation two years later. Despite his brief political career, Milk became a San Francisco icon and a hero in the gay community.

Milk was dubbed "the most prominent and most transparent LGBT official ever elected in the United States" in 2002.

"What set Harvey apart from you and me was that he was a visionary," Anne Kronenberg, his final campaign manager, wrote about him.

He imagined a peaceful world inside his head, but then he began to create it for real, for all of us." In 2009, Milk was formally recognized for the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Early life

Milk was born in Woodmere, New York City's suburb of Woodmere, to William Milk and Minerva Karns. He was the younger brother of Lithuanian Jewish parents and the grandson of Morris Milk, a department store operator who helped to organise the first synagogue in the area. Harvey was praised for his protruding ears, big nose, and huge feet as a youth, and he attracted attention as a class clown. When he was in school, he played football and developed a passion for opera. "Glimpy Milk" is the product of a high school yearbook's name, 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 then moved to New York State College for Teachers, Albany (now the State University of New York at Albany), majoring in mathematics from 1947 to 1951. He also wrote for the college newspaper. "He never thought of as a potential queer," one classmate said, "he was never thought of as a man's man."

Milk served in the United States Navy during the Korean War after graduation. As a dive officer, he served aboard the submarine rescue ship USS Kittiwake (ASR-13). He later moved to Naval Station San Diego, where he served as a diving instructor. He resigned from the Navy at the rank of lieutenant, junior grade in 1955, and was forced to accept a "more than honorable" discharge and leave the service rather than face a court-martial rather than face a court-martial due to his homosexuality.

Milk's early career was marked by frequent shifts; in later years, he would delight in sharing about his transformation from a middle-class Jewish boy. He began teaching at George W. Hewlett High School on Long Island. Joe Campbell was born in 1956 at the Jacob Riis Park beach, a popular destination for gay men in Queens. Campbell was ardently in his hunt for milk. Even after they joined together, Milk wrote romantic notes and poems for Campbell. Growing bored with their New York lives, they decided to move to Dallas, Texas, but they were dissatisfied and moved back to New York, where Milk took up as an actuarial statistician for an insurance company. Campbell and Milk have been together for nearly six years; this will be his longest relationship.

Milk tried to keep his early romantic life separate from his family and work. He was still single and single in New York and thought of heading to Miami to marry a lesbian friend so that each would not be in the way of the other." However, he opted to remain in New York, where he secretly pursued gay affairs. In 1962, Milk became involved with Craig Rodwell, who was ten years younger. Though Milk courted Rodwell ardently, awakening him every morning with a phone call and handing him notes, Milk was dissatisfied with Rodwell's relationship with the New York Mattachine Society, a gay rights group. Rodwell was arrested in Riis Park and charged with rioting and indecent exposure (the rule mandated men's swimsuits to stretch from above the navel to below the thigh). The friendship came to an end soon after Milk became alarmed with Rodwell's tendency to agitate the police.

Milk abruptly ceased being an insurance consultant and became a Wall Street researcher with Bache & Company. Despite his pledge to offending the senior members of the company by refusing their advice and hulking his success, he was often promoted. Although he was proficient at his work, coworkers noticed that Milk's heart was not in his work. He began a romantic relationship with Jack Galen McKinley and recruited him to work on conservative Republican Barry Goldwater's 1964 presidential bid. Their marriage was tense. McKinley was 16 years old when he first started his relationship with Milk in late 1964. He was prone to depression and had occasionally threatened suicide if Milk did not pay enough attention to him. To make a point, Milk took him to the hospital where Milk's ex-lover, Joe Campbell, was recovering 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 know why Campbell's despondency was reason enough to consider suicide as a possibility.

Since World War II, San Francisco's major port city had welcomed a substantial number of gay men who had been barred from the military and chose to remain rather than return to their hometowns and face ostracism. The Kinsey Institute in 1969 estimated San Francisco had more gay people per capita than in any other American city; when the National Institute of Mental Health asked the institute to investigate homosexuals, the institute chose San Francisco as its focus. Thousands of gay men attracted to San Francisco were drawn to San Francisco, including milk and McKinley. McKinley began his career as a stage manager for Tom O'Horgan, a director who began his career in experimental theater, but then moved to much bigger Broadway productions. They first appeared in 1969 with the Broadway touring company Hair. McKinley was given a job in the Jesus Christ Superstar production in New York City, and their tempestuous friendship came to an end. Milk was so important that he stayed at an investment company that he decided to remain. Milk's hair grew long in 1970, as a result of the United States' invasion of Cambodia, he became dissatisfied with the country's rising political climate. When told to cut it, he refused and was fired.

Milk moved from California to Texas, with no one having a steady job or a vision. He became involved with O'Horgan's theater company as a "general aide" in New York City, and he began as associate producer for Lenny and Eve Merriam's Inner City. Milk's conservatism was tempered by the time he had spent with the cast of flower children. Milk was described as "a sad eyed guy," in a recent New York Times article about O'Horgan. Craig Rodwell read the description of the formerly uptight guy and wondered if it could be the same person. One of Milk's Wall Street colleagues was concerned that he had 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." On Christopher Street Day 1971 in New York, Rosa von Praunheim's documentary short film Homosexuals in New York depicts Milk exuberant as a protester.

Milk met Scott Smith, who was 18 years old at the time, and began a new friendship. Milk and Smith returned to San Francisco, where they lived on money they had saved. He and Smith opened a camera store on Castro Street in March 1973, after a roll of film Milk left in a local store was destroyed.

The Society for Individual Rights (SIR) and the Daughters of Bilitis (DOB) both began to campaign in San Francisco against police persecution of gay bars and entrapment. Oral sex was still a criminal offense in 1970, and nearly 90 people were arrested in the city for having sex in public parks at night. Mayor Alioto had ordered the police to attack the parks in the hopes that the decision would be favorable to the Archdiocese and his Catholic followers. In San Francisco, 2,800 gay men were arrested for public sex in 1971. By comparison, New York City made only 63 arrests for the same offence last year. Any arrest for a morals offence necessitated a criminal record. The police were not convicted of being a sexual criminal.

Representative Phillip Burton, Assemblyman Willie Brown, and other California legislators acknowledged the increasing presence and organization of homosexuals in the city, and courted their votes by attending meetings of gay and lesbian groups. In 1969, Brown pressed for legalization of sex between consenting adults, but it was turned down. Popular moderate Supervisor Dianne Feinstein's attempt to become mayor of SIR, rejecting Alioto, was also pursued by SIR. Richard Hongisto, an ex-cop, served for ten years to change the San Francisco Police Department's conservative view of the homosexual community, as well as publicly appealing to the gay community, which resulted in significant funds for his campaign for sheriff's. Although Feinstein's rebuttal of Feinstein, Hongisto's victory in 1971 demonstrated the political clout of the gay community.

The SIR had grown a following for political maneuvering. Jim Foster, Rick Stokes, and Advocate publisher David Goodstein formed the Alice B. Toklas Memorial Democratic Club, also known as "alice" in 1971. Alice befriended liberal politicians to convince them to endorse bills, which was very fruitful in 1972, when Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon obtained Feinstein's permission for a law prohibiting employment discrimination based on gender. Alice chose Stokes to run for a small but crucial seat on the community college board. Despite winning 45,000 votes, Stokes was tacky and unassuming, and did not win. Foster, on the other hand, shot to national prominence by being the first openly gay man to address a national convention. According to San Francisco politicians, his address at the 1972 Democratic National Convention ensured that his voice, as well as the gay community's votes, would be heard.

When confronted with civic challenges and policies he opposed, Milk became more interested in civic and civic issues. A state bureaucrat arrived at Milk's shop Castro Camera in 1973 and told him he owe $100 as a deposit against state sales tax. The milk was incredulous and traded chanting with the guy about the rights of business owners; after he protested for weeks at state offices, the deposit was reduced to $30. When a teacher came into his store to borrow a projector because the computers in the schools didn't work, there was a lot of confusion regarding government priorities. During the Watergate hearings, friends recall that they were forced to restrain him from kicking the television while Attorney General John N. Mitchell gave consistently "I don't recall" responses. Milk decided that the time had come for a new one as the city manager. "I've finally arrived at the point where I knew I had to become involved or shut down," he said later.

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