Essay On Harvey Milk

The assassinations of Mayor George Moscone and San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk were by former Supervisor Dan White. White was angry that Mayor Moscone refused to re-appoint him to his position, from which he had resigned. Supervisor Milk had also strongly petitioned against Dan White being re-appointed. Supervisor Harvey Milk was the first openly gay official in the United States and I am sure there were people who may have felt that because Harvey Milk was gay that “White did the people a favor”. However, I do not agree with the last sentence, “And a lot of people feel the same way today.”

When Harvey Milk first started campaigning, the gay political establishment in San Francisco did not really welcome him. For many years Jim Foster

For example, when a labor union, called the Teamsters, wanted to strike against beer distributors who declined to sign the union contract, an organizer asked Milk to help with gay bars. Milk asked the union to hire more gay drivers and a few days later he insisted that gay bars in and around the Castro should refuse to sell beer. The boycott was successful and Milk found organized labor to be a strong political ally. He began to call himself “The Mayor of Castro Street”. Castro Street’s presence was growing and so was Milk’s reputation. Even though this was a huge turning point for Milk and the gay community in the Castro district, there were tensions growing between older citizens and the Castro. For instance, a few gay men tried to open up a shop, but the Eureka Valley Merchants Association, tried to prevent them from getting a business license. Milk and some other gay business owners started the Castro Village Association, with him as president. He organized the Castro Street Fair in 1974 in order to attract more customers to the area. More business was done at this fair than on any other

The only person who opposed it was Supervisor White. Another bill that he concentrated on was to require dog owners to clean up after their dogs. A more serious law was the Briggs Initiative. John Briggs who had to drop out of the 1978 received a lot of support for this proposition. The Briggs Initiative would have made firing any gay public school and teachers, and those who were supportive of gay rights and worked at public schools, mandatory. Harvey Milk attended every event and campaigned against the bill throughout the state. Briggs said that homosexual teachers were the ones to abuse children. However, Milk responded, with statistics, that many of the pedophiles that were out there identified themselves primarily as heterosexual. Despite the losses for gay rights that year, Milk remained optimistic. On November 7, 1978, the proposition lost more than a million votes and in San Francisco 75% of people voted against it.

On November 10, 1978, White resigned his position, claiming that he did not have enough money to support his family. Within a matter of days, he requested that his resignation be withdrawn. The Mayor originally agreed. However, the he had further consideration and decided he wanted to appoint someone who was more in line with the growing change in ethnic diversity of White’s district and would be more