Harvey Milk Day: May 22

Harvey Milk: 1978

About Harvey Milk

Harvey Bernard Milk (May 22, 1930 – November 27, 1978) was an American politician who became the first openly gay person to be elected to public office in California when he won a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.  Politics and gay activism were not his early interests; he was not open about his homosexuality and did not participate in civic matters until around the age of 40, after his experiences in the counterculture of the 1960's.

Milk has ties to the Capital District:  he graduated from what's now The University at Albany in 1951 with a Bachelor's degree in Mathematics.  He moved from New York City to settle in San Francisco in 1972 amid a migration of gay men to the Castro District. He took advantage of the growing political and economic power of the neighborhood to promote his interests, and ran unsuccessfully for political office three times.  His theatrical campaigns earned him increasing popularity, and Milk won a seat as a city supervisor in 1977, part of the broader social changes the city was experiencing.

Milk served almost 11 months in office and was responsible for passing a stringent gay rights ordinance for the city. On November 27, 1978, Milk and Mayor George Moscone were assassinated by Dan White, another city supervisor who had recently resigned but wanted his job back.  Milk's election was made possible by and was a key component of a shift in San Francisco politics. The assassinations and the ensuing events were the result of continuing ideological conflicts in the city.

Despite his short career in politics, Milk became an icon in San Francisco and a martyr in the gay community. In 2002, Milk was called "the most famous and most significantly open LGBT official ever elected in the United States". Anne Kronenberg, his final campaign manager (and Co-Founder of the Milk Foundation), wrote of him: "What set Harvey apart from you or me was that he was a visionary. He imagined a righteous world inside his head and then he set about to create it for real, for all of us." Milk was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009.

Milk Foundation

Harvey believed broad public education and dialogue was paramount to his life’s work as a civil rights leader and, as if riding on Harvey’s shoulders, the Milk Foundation seeks to inspire individuals, communities and organizations to carry on his values in a timeless vision for a better world.

Harvey Milk Day

Harvey often spoke of the need for a community to pass on at the global level its own stories of strength, authenticity, value, and accomplishment. The Foundation puts particular emphasis in supporting both conventional and new forums and media for Harvey’s story and the LGBT community’s collective story to be told across broad and culturally diverse audiences. The Foundation has taken the lead on establishing a set of online and new media materials for International Harvey Milk Day activities across the globe and we have increasingly offering on the ground support where possible with legacy building events and monuments that have a educational and societal ‘learning’ element that furthers inclusion and acceptance.  From Stuart Milk’s successful early work in 2008 and 2009 with EQCA and Senator Mark Leno on establishing an annual Harvey Milk Day holiday for the nearly 40 million California citizens, to the roll out of Harvey Milk Day educational material and supports, the Milk Foundation has a core mission element to see every May 22 celebrated in as many communities as possible, thus providing support to local programs and equality initiatives.

(c) Copyright 2014 Robyn King. All Rights Reserved.

Source:  www.milkfoundation.org
(c) Copyright 2014 Robyn M. King. All Rights Reserved.