June is LGBTQ+ Pride Month. All month long, Gum News will feature lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer or questioning pioneers in a variety of areas.
His name appears across San Francisco, on a United States Navy oiler, and on a Presidential Medal of Freedom, but many people do not know his name. Harvey Milk was the first openly gay person to be elected to a government office in California. He was a leader of the gay-rights movement in San Francisco, standing up for his hopes, his friends, and himself. He was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977. Later, he was shot to death while serving on the board. Milk’s political service and the circumstances surrounding his death brought widespread attention to the gay rights movement in the United States. This movement later came to be called the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) rights movement.
Harvey Bernard Milk was born in Woodmere, New York, on May 22, 1930. In 1951, he received a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from the New York State College for Teachers at Albany (now the State University of New York at Albany). He then enlisted in the U.S. Navy. After being discharged in 1955, Milk returned to New York City to work as a high-school teacher. During the 1960′s, he held jobs as an insurance company actuary (mathematician specializing in risk estimates) and as a Wall Street investment analyst. Milk moved to San Francisco in 1972 and opened a camera store on Castro Street the following year.
In 1973, Milk entered politics and ran unsuccessfully for a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. He ran unsuccessfully again in 1975, failed in his run for the state legislature in 1976, and finally won a seat on the board in 1977. While in office, he helped pass a gay civil rights law and worked to establish alliances between the gay community and various other minority groups. Milk’s popularity with the gay community in the Castro Street area earned him the nickname “the Mayor of Castro Street.”
On Nov. 27, 1978, Dan White, a former member of the Board of Supervisors, shot and killed both Milk and Mayor George Moscone. White was convicted of voluntary manslaughter and sentenced to a prison term of seven years and eight months. Following the verdict, many of Milk’s supporters, believing that the sentence was too light, demonstrated in the streets of San Francisco. The demonstrations eventually erupted into a number of riots. These events became known as the White Night Riots.
Milk was a Korean war veteran, teacher, actuary, analyst, camera enthusiast, activist, and politician. Milk inspired others to be themselves and seek out the rights they deserve. Milk told his supporters, “Hope will never be silent.”
