When Harvey Milk was assassinated on November 27, 1978, I was in my senior year of high school in the Los Angeles suburb of Hawthorne. I was at that stage of life when I knew I was queer, but hadn’t fully figured out yet that I was gay. I honestly don’t have any memory of Milk's and Moscone’s murders, Dan White’s sham of a trial, or the White Night Riots, although I must’ve seen and read news reports at the time since these obviously were huge stories. What I do have a very strong memory of is the prior year’s anti-gay ballot initiative Prop 6, the Briggs Initiative, which would have barred gays and lesbians from teaching, and which Harvey so famously campaigned strongly against.
Working as the announcer that year for the school band during a football game half-time show just after the initiative didn't pass, I made an impromptu, unscripted reference to our band director, who was widely rumored to be gay, announcing over the loudspeaker: "... and Mr. Morgan would like to personally thank each and every one of you for voting NO on Proposition 6!" Needless to say, I was never let in front of the mic again! When I graduated high school in 1979, disco was in full swing and sexual freedom was at its peak, though I wasn't quite ready to join the party just yet. But when I began taking those initial, tentative steps into the gay community in the early Eighties, the AIDS epidemic hit, and all the gay lib frivolity that I had just begun to get a taste of vanished almost as fast as thousands of young gay men were beginning to.
By 1982, I was fully out, and quickly becoming an activist, inspired in large part by this book, which began my radicalization (and which I still have, and is which still rather provocative, almost 40 years later!) So when Randy Shilts published The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk on February 1, 1982, I was first in line at my local B. Dalton Booksellers to buy it, and devoured it in one sitting. Thus I first learned the details of Harvey’s life story, his dreams and accomplishments, and his tragic premature death.
On November 1, 1984, I was in the audience at the Castro Theatre when Rob Epstein’s film The Times of Harvey Milk premiered in San Francisco. By then, I had been living in SF for 11 months and a man I was dating at the time somehow managed to get us tickets. I was working at Gramophone Records, which was right across from the theater, and when I saw the line snaking down Castro and turning the corner on to 18th, I got off work early so I could go get a spot in line. The theater was packed to the gills, and after they let in all the VIPs, we still ended up in the balcony, way up in the corner of the theater, where the seats are really tiny. I will never forget that evening, only because of the incredible group catharsis that occurred. To say there wasn’t a dry eye in the house is a major understatement. To this day, I never again have experienced a circumstance in which such a large number of people were openly sobbing in public. Milk’s murder was only 6 years in the past at that point, this was his hometown, and the theater was full of people who personally knew him. And those that didn’t actually know him, like me, had already begun to canonize him. So much sadness and grief in the Castro Theater that night. The queers were full of tears, but little did we know what great devastation and despair was headed directly our way.
When Dan White committed suicide on October 21, 1985, I had been in SF for almost two years and AIDS was fully “happening” by then, although not yet for mainstream America. I was volunteering for both the Stop AIDS organization and the Shanti project, and was fully immersed in the SF Gay Community – politically, socially, and recreationally. As word of White’s demise spread, queers spontaneously began to gather in the Castro to celebrate, growing in number until the cops shut down Castro between Market and 19th. We were all singing “Ding, Dong, The Witch is Dead” from the Wizard of Oz, and I remember how happy we all were – momentarily -- until the party became more somber and turned into yet another candlelight down Market Street to City Hall, a well-worn path that gays had been trodding since the days of Harvey’s activism, a route that showed no sign of being decommissioned any time soon due to its continued heavy use now for AIDS vigils. Yes, Dan White is Dead. Hooray! But Harvey still is too, and hundreds more are dying weekly.
Fast forward 23 years to 2008, and Hollywood finally gets around to its biopic treatment of Harvey, a film I’ve probably seen 5 or 6 times, since I used to show it in my classes. I’ve seen Epstein’s film even more than that, since I used to show that in my classes as well for many years. Yet I find that, at this point in the assignment, I feel
wrote-out, and I haven’t even discussed the films yet! I will say briefly that I prefer the documentary over the biopic, although that’s usually the case for me. I’ll echo my critique of
Frida for Van Zandt's film: I’ve got no major complaints with it. It’s got cred, with good queer participation in its production, and it reintroduced Milk to a whole new generation of people. (Plus, I'm
in it, and you can
see me if you know where to look!)
Fast forward again to 2020, and I find myself feeling like Harry in Leslea Newman’s short story that’s obliquely about Harvey Milk. The dead are gone, many of them have been gone for a long time now, one just went yesterday, and pretty soon, I’ll be gone too. What a long, strange trip it’s been. But Harvey’s quote about a bullet through his brain busting through every closet door had a profound effect on me when I first read it back in 1982, and he inspired me to pursue my path as an educator and activist. I hope that I have had a similar effect on some of my students. In this manner, we are indeed “still here” even after we’re dead.
