Harvey Bernard Milk May 22, β November 27, was an American politician and the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California, as a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Milk was born and raised in New York. He acknowledged his homosexuality in adolescence but secretly pursued sexual relationships well into adulthood. The counterculture of the s caused him to shed many of his conservative views about individual freedom and sexual expression.
Milk moved to San Francisco in and opened a camera store. Although he held an assortment of jobs and frequently changed addresses, he settled in the Castro , a neighborhood that was experiencing a mass immigration of gay men and lesbians.
He ran for city supervisor in but the existing gay political establishment resisted him. Milk's campaign was compared to theater due to his personality, earning media attention and votes, although not enough to be elected. He campaigned again in the next two supervisor elections, dubbing himself the "Mayor of Castro Street". The voter response caused him to also run for the California State Assembly. Due to his growing popularity, he led the gay rights movement in battles against anti-gay initiatives.
Milk was elected city supervisor in after San Francisco began to choose neighborhood representatives rather than city-wide ones. During Milk's almost eleven months in office, he sponsored a bill banning discrimination based on sexual orientation in public accommodations, housing, and employment.
The Supervisors passed the bill by a vote of 11β1, and Mayor George Moscone signed it into law. On November 27, , Milk and Moscone were assassinated by Dan White , a disgruntled former city supervisor who cast the sole vote against Milk's bill. He imagined a righteous world inside his head and then he set about to create it for real, for all of us. He was the younger son of Litvak parents and the grandson of Morris Milk, a department store owner [ 4 ] [ 5 ] who helped to organize the first synagogue in the area.
