Harvey Milk
-Chrissie
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It has been said that all politics are local, and one of the best examples of this is the career of San Francisco City Supervisor Harvey Milk. And, like many public figures whose lives are cut short, he has become better known in death than in life.
Harvey Milk was born on 22 May 1930 in the New York suburb of Woodmere, where he grew up. He earned a bachelor’s in mathematics from New York State College for Teachers in 1951, then spent four years in the Navy. His service career ended abruptly in 1955 when his sexuality was discovered; he avoided a court-martial by accepting an “other than honorable” discharge. He used his degree to
teach high school math for a few years on Long Island, then moved to Dallas for a time with his partner, Joe Campbell, then back to New York when they separated. He bounced back and forth between various jobs, spending some time as an analyst on Wall Street, then working with a Broadway company, first in New York, then moving to San Francisco. When the company moved on, he stayed in California, but for only a year, returning to New York to produce plays. The casts on these productions were made up of self-described “flower children” whose influence stripped away what little conservatism he still had. By the end of his time with this group, he was described as looking like a hippie. There he also met Jack Smith, who led him back to San Francisco to stay.
The two moved into San Francisco’s Castro neighborhood in 1973 and opened a camera shop. While he’d been loosely interested in politics before, it was his experiences here that pushed him into activism. And, despite what he is known for, it was not his sexuality that defined his politics, but the needs of the neighborhood, starting with the requirement that local businesses pay some of their expected sales tax revenue up front. He was also inspired by the Watergate hearings and the corruption they exposed. His first campaign to be elected to the board of city supervisors was small but well-received. He looked to local gay organizations for support, but was snubbed as a newcomer. He focused on immediately tangible issues, small business taxes, lack of school funding, legalization of marijuana, and the decriminalization of private sexual activity between consenting adults. With very little money and virtually no staff, using his charisma, speechmaking, and a liberal platform, he won nearly 17,000 votes. It wasn’t enough to win a spot on the board, but it set him up as a local leader and showed that politics was his best destiny. He came to be known as the unofficial “mayor of Castro Street.”
With this influence, he worked with the Teamsters on a boycott of Coors when they refused to recognize the union, supported gay business owners against prejudice in business licensing as the president of the Castro Village Association, and organized a very successful Castro Street Fair in hopes of drawing customers for the local businesses. With these experiences, he made another run for a position on the board of supervisors in 1975. He decided to clean up his image: he cut his hair, traded his t-shirt and jeans for a suit, and distanced himself from what was considered the more disreputable aspects of his earlier years. He won more votes than in the previous election, but still not enough to put him on the Board of Supervisors. In the same election, noted liberal George Moscone was elected mayor of San Francisco. He and Milk had campaigned together and had a good working relationship with many of the same goals, so he made Milk a city commissioner. Harvey Milk was the first openly gay city commissioner in the US. However, he decided to run for a position in the State Assembly, which meant he could not continue as a city commissioner as the mayor would not allow anyone to run for one political office while holding another. Milk ran another fairly disorganized campaign, but only lost by 4,000 votes.
The next year, San Francisco voters approved a measure to reorganize the city supervisor elections so that they would be chosen in local districts, not on a citywide ballot. Under these new rules, Milk easily won a seat on the board of supervisors. Similar to his earlier campaigns, he focused on local populist issues, adding the need for free public transit as well as more, and more affordable, childcare. His first piece of legislation was a civil rights bill that outlawed discrimination in hiring and housing on the basis of sexual orientation. It passed with the support of all but one of his fellow supervisors, Dan White. White had a personal dispute with Milk over the latter’s change of opinion on the building of a mental health facility in White’s district; Milk had opposed it with him, but supported it after learning more about it. White was also known to be a homophobe, though he claimed that did not affect his ability to work with homosexuals. Milk’s other major initiative was what came to be known as the “pooper scooper law,” a city ordinance that required people to clean up after their dogs. It was one of the most popular initiatives ever put forward by the Board of Supervisors.
This era of increasing rights across the country was met with a backlash by conservatives. Some focused on particular areas and San Francisco was considered by many anti-gay conservatives to be the worst of the worst. In 1978, a California state legislator, John Briggs, used this backlash to support a proposition that would ban anyone in the LGBTQIA+ community from working in public schools. This was the issue that truly brought Harvey Milk to national attention. He made a point of attending every one of Briggs’ events, asking questions and debating with him. The proposition lost.
At about the same time, Dan White decided to resign from the Board of Supervisors, but then changed his mind. Mayor Moscone decided to hold him to his resignation, having been given the opportunity to fill the seat with someone who better reflected the local community. On 27 November 1978, White snuck into City Hall with a pistol and hollow-point bullets. He killed the mayor at his desk, then found Harvey Milk in the hallway and shot and killed him as well. He made a point of shooting both multiple times, ending with two bullets to their heads. He turned himself in soon after.
Milk had not been a stranger to death threats and, in a strangely prescient moment, once said “if a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door.” The effect was not so immediate, but the work for full equality that Milk did has been continued and, despite recent pushback, is closer to being fulfilled than it ever has been.