Harvey Milk: Support the Rainbow Harvey Milk was known as the first openly gay official that was elected to office. He helped open lots of doors for the gay community when he was elected to have a seat on the San Francisco City-County Board. Before we can learn about his feats to become the politician he is, we have to learn about where he came from and how he gained the confidence to do something that great. Harvey Bernard Milk was born on May 22, 1930 to William and Minerva Milk. He and his only brother Robert grew up in a small, middle-class, Jewish household. Harvey was a good student and spent some of his down time playing football or helping in the family’s furniture store called Milk’s. He went to Bay Shore High School and preformed …show more content…
After that he joined the US Navy. He eventually served as a diving instructor at a base in San Diego, California, during the Korean War. After he was discharged in 1955, he worked in several different jobs. He was a public school teacher, a production helper for several high-profile Broadway shows, stock analyst and Wall Street investment banker. After getting bored of his finance work, he made friends with some gay radicals who lived in Greenwich Village. Milk soon tired of his life in New York and moved to San Francisco in 1972. He opened a small camera shop called Castro Cameras on Castro Street, meaning he was right in the center of the city’s gay community. Milk knew since high school that he was gay but he chose to keep silent about his personal life and even chose to stay silent and hide on the side when there was a large gay rights movement. In San Francisco, his views of politics and government showed more than before and he found he had a voice as a leader and an activist. In 1973 he declared he would run for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Since he didn’t have much money and he was a new politician with very little experience, he lost the election, but that didn’t stop him from trying again. He got ready to run for it again when the chance arose which was two years later. He lost by a slim percentage, but by then he became a great force for the gay community with connections that included the mayor. He soon