This Saturday, May 22nd, 2010, is the first official Harvey Milk Day in the state of California. Thanks to the film "Milk" starring Sean Penn, a new generation of young people are now aware of Milk’s history and influence in the continuing battle for LGBT Equality. May 22nd is Harvey Milk’s actual birthday. He was 48 years old when he was shot and killed by Dan White in 1978.
Harvey Milk was born to Jewish parents in New York in 1930. He grew up as any other child, played football in high school, he was gregarious, but kept his homosexuality a secret. He later joined the Navy during the Korean war and afterwards worked as a teacher.
Milk’s story is very different than the stories of many of today’s LGBT activists, who become involved in one way or another in the battle for equality at very young ages. Not only did Harvey Milk not get involved in the movement, and politics in general, until he was in his forties, for most of his life before that, he was actually opposed to open rebellion in the political arena. In fact, one partner’s activist status and subsequent conflicts with the police disturbed Milk, and contributed to the end of the relationship.
Milk first experienced San Francisco in the late 1960’s. Gay life was vastly different at that time. Gay sex was illegal in many ways, and those caught were arrested and sometimes jailed. Milk drifted from California back to New York where he met Scott Smith. In the early 1970’s, the two relocated back to San Francisco. Milk spent more time around the hippie culture of that time, witnessing their liberal view of life, and as he became more aware of the conservative and corporate attitudes which threatened to harm small, local neighborhoods, both in terms of shifting employment away from them and imposing higher fees and taxes on individuals, Harvey’s political shift began to form. Soon, he was moving with Scott into the Castro in San Francisco and opening his own camera business, where he continued to feel the influence of big brother as well as the hatred, discrimination and violence against gays.
Harvey morphed from a quiet conservative to a vocal liberal, making his presence known to all around him. It wasn’t until he was in his forties that Harvey truly found his calling and his place in the world, and it was a far cry from the passive, conservative stance he’d taken most of his life.
A major shift occurred in 1975 when the former partner of a former partner of Milk’s interceded in an assassination attempt on President Gerald Ford. Bill Sipple was heralded as a hero in thwarting the attempt on Ford’s life, but wished to remain in the closet, despite Harvey’s urgings for him to come out of the closet publicly. Harvey felt it would gain a lot of ground in the country for gays is a homosexual could be seen as just as heroic as anyone else, helping to take them out of the stereotypes they were mired in. Sipple, who was out to friends but not his family or the public, refused, so Milk broke the story, gaining a good deal of the spotlight on himself as well, pushing him farther into the public consciousness.
Milk was disappointed in gay groups of the time, feeling they were too afraid to really stand up for what was right, too willing to conform to societal standards, and decided it might be time for him to get into politics. Since he was a newcomer, the road was rough, and he failed several times before becoming a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1978.
In his brief stint in politics Harvey had a major victory in helping Proposition 6, which would have allowed gay teachers and their supporters to be fired, fail. It was a crushing blow at the time to the religious movement across the nation to restrict the rights of LGBT Americans.
Unfortunately Harvey was a Supervisor at the same time that Dan White was. White was deemed by many to have a hatred for gays, although publicly he stated otherwise. White suffered many failures as a Supervisor, some in which White felt that Milk inappropriately reversed his promise to support White (Milk initially agreed to support White’s bill to bar a mental health clinic from opening in his district, although after researching the project Milk felt it should not be blocked). White was also seeking Milk’s support in suggesting an increase in Supervisor annual salaries (which at the time were around $9,600 a year) as well as confronting Mayor Moscone about it, to no avail.
Dan White eventually submitted his resignation, only to change his mind later and request his job back. The denial of that may have been the thing that sent White over the edge. White entered City Hall through an open window, with a loaded gun, and murdered Mayor George Moscone after a disagreement in his office. White then moved to his office, where he lured Milk for a meeting, and murdered him as well. Both victims were shot and killed at point blank range, and then shot in the head several times after they had fallen to the ground. Dan White fled the scene, only to turn himself in later.
Dan White’s trial ended in a ruling of voluntary manslaughter, thanks to an incredibly weak prosecution, who felt sympathy for White, and to the defense, who used what is commonly known as the "Twinkie defense" to get White a reduced sentence. The defense claimed that White, who was already severely depressed, spent the night before the murders gorging himself on high sugar, junk food, which created an imbalance in his system allowing him to carry out the acts of murder. While the jury and even the prosecution allowed themselves to be cajoled into this travesty of a defense, the "diminished capacity" scenario, as it was formally known, was later thrown out as a defense in California courts.
This was due in great part to the public outrage over the ruling, which led to the "White Night Riots" that took place on May 21st, 1979. Rioters attacked City Hall, attempted to set it on fire, and overturned and burned police vehicles in the streets.
While police were ordered to show restraint toward the rioters, later that night a police force infiltrated the Castro District in San Francisco and randomly beat citizens. The riots went on for hours, resulting in hundreds of injuries and dozens of arrests. Afterward, the gay community refused to apologize for the riots, which ironically resulted in increased political power.
Dan White served just over five years in prison, only to commit suicide a year and a half later.
Harvey Milk may have come to politics late in life, and his stint trying to create positive change for the LGBT community may have been brief, but his impact lives on to this day. In 2009 President Obama posthumously issued Milk a Presidential Medal Of Freedom Award, and May 22, 2010 marks the first Official Harvey Milk Day in the state of California.
