January 4, 2024 • 39 mins
This week, Georgia tells Karen about the life, assassination and legacy of Harvey Milk.
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Las Hell.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Love.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
Welcome to my Favorite Murder. That's Georgia Hartstar, that's Karen Kilgariff.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
This is one of our special holiday episodes.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Yeah, a story each a nice donation so we can
take a couple of minutes off to celebrate the holidays
with our families.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
And yet still stay with you in your childhood bedroom
while you work through some serious shit.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
And guess what, we'll be doing the same.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
So hey, we're with you.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
It's like we're together.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Always.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
So hey, we have an announcement to make We are
no longer working with Wondery Amazon.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Yes and not. Among other things, means no more early
release episodes, which means everybody is listening together, just like
the good old days, which we love.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
I love that so Exactly Right has always been owned
and operated by me and Karen. We're so proud of that.
So thank you guys for sticking by us. We appreciate you.
We really can't wait to see what's next for Exactly Right.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
Also, thank you to our staff we have. I mean,
we talk about them all the time, but the staff
is exactly right, the people that make this network go.
I mean, we just couldn't be doing any of this
without them. We have an amazing group of people that
we work with and for and we're so proud of
the work they do. And yeah, we just we feel
(01:45):
like the future is ours. Also, here's some more good news.
We are continuing our weekly holiday donation tradition. This week
we are donating to the ACLU, specifically for their work
for the rights for the LGBTQ community. The acl YOU
works to ensure that lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer
people can live openly without discrimination and enjoy equal rights,
(02:08):
personal autonomy, and freedom of expression and association. If you
want more information about the work the ACLU does for
the LGBTQ community, you can go to ACLU dot org.
And to help them out with that work, we're going
to give ten thousand dollars, And if you have any
extra this holiday season or afterwards to give, we'd love
(02:30):
for you to give to yay, hooray.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
Hooray gay rights. That's right, hey, speaking of Should I
get right into my story?
Speaker 2 (02:40):
Oh my god, the fastest ever?
Speaker 1 (02:42):
Yes, because and yes I plan this. This is the
story of Harvey Milk. Are you how have we You're
already tearing up? How have we not covered this?
Speaker 2 (02:57):
I mean, this is a hometown story of my there's
a hometown for you. Yeah, such a big deal and
one of my favorite documentaries.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
Oh, I was literally just watching it. It's amazing. It's
called The Times of Harvey Milk. Yeah, it's timeless. And
there's firefighters from San Francisco in this story too, right,
so like absolutely hits home. So please chime in. Hannah
was like, how have we not done this story? I
was like, how have we not done this story? How
have we not done this story? Because it is legendary,
(03:28):
He's a legend.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
The tragedy of this life being cut short and the
other lives involved, I'll.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
Just what you get to the tragedy at this I
think cut Short is on par, if not more so
to me than RFK because the good that this person
did and was going to continue to do, obviously, like
in such a short amount of time. I mean, it
is nothing short of a superhero.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
Yeah. And if it wasn't for that documentary, Like I
feel like watching that documentary, I was downloaded with the
like I just wouldn't have known it in any other
way obviously, right, they never taught that in school right
when I was growing I mean of course they didn't.
It was so backwards and I didn't understand how close
we were to it at that time. Yeah, it was
(04:16):
like he threw up a full bloody block and turned
sentiment within San Francisco, which is a very at the time,
it was a very segregated and very kind of like
the Irish are over here, the Chinese are in Chinatown, and.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
No one's thinking of anyone. None of the minorities in
that neighborhood are getting rights at all, especially not in
Castro and with gay people of course. Yeah, you know,
it's so crazy. I was going to say that I
didn't learn about this story in school, which is a shame.
I learned about this from a Dead Kennedy's album, a
(04:51):
Dead Kennedy song called I Thought the Law and I Won.
It just gives you all this, you know, in this
punk rock form information about the and I was like,
who's this Harvey Milk, who's this guy? Like, what's this
twinkie defense? You know? And that's how we fucking learned
about it. It's through punk rock. Like, that's how shitty
our fucking school system is. I had to learn about
history through Jello Biofra.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
And that's also how important punk rock was, right, and
I guess is but like especially at that time, really
actually going, oh I'm going to say something that's actually
gonna matter.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
Yeah, yeah, so very cool. Thank you Dead Kennedy's good job,
who are from the Bay Area as well. So the
main sources I used for this story are the documentary
The Times of Harvey Milk, which is on Max and
a book called Harvey Milk His Lives and Death by
Lillian Vaderman, and the rest of the sources can be
found in the show notes. So early life. Harvey Milk
(05:45):
is born in nineteen thirty in Woodmere, New York, which
is a small town on Long Island. His grandparents owned
a modest dry goods store that became Long Island's first
department store, and were some of the founding members of
the woodmeres still thriving Jewish community. They helped to build
its first synagogue. But their son, Harvey's father, William, is
(06:05):
the family rebel. William had gone off to fight in
World War One and came back with a tattoo, which
is like bad enough for any kid, but in Jewish
culture just very frowned upon.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
Isn't it. You? Can't be buried in a Jewish cemetery
if you.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
Have a tattoo, that's right, So goodbye Jewish cemeteries to me.
I mean, I don't know how it works these days,
you know. I'm sure they have to be lenient somewhat
on those like at least for non conservative cemeteries.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
Please, rabbis in the listening audience, if you have any
information about any updates.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
Or not, we'd love to hear about it, definitely.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
And Georgia would love to talk to you about joining
your congregation community in a congregation.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
It's congregation, okay, So it's nineteen eighteen. The tattoo is
a huge deale. Still, William winds up working in the
family store, but he has a fraught relationship with Harvey's grandparents,
which also makes him of a little father to Harvey
and Harvey's brother Robert when they eventually come around. Harvey's
mother is named Minerva, which bring it back, so good Minnie,
(07:09):
and everyone calls her a mini How cute is that
she's an early feminist and had been one of the
very first women to enlist in the first women's branch
of the Navy in World War One. Wow, so now
you're starting to see where he gets his politics from.
Minnie is passionate about social justice and community service and
passes his passion onto her younger son, Harvey, who is
(07:31):
such a cutie in the documentary as a kid with
his big ears and just like this skinny little Jewish kid,
it's very cute. As a child, Harvey spends all of
his free time and pocket money seeing movies at Woodmere's
little theater. But one day he tells his brother that
he loves going to the movies, not really because of
the features or the shorts or the newsreels. He doesn't
(07:51):
care about watching stuff, but because the owner of the
theater holds a raffle for the children before each screening,
and when Harvey wins the raffle, he gets to up
to the front of the theater and ham it up
in front of the audience while he collects his prize.
So he just likes being on stage.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
Sure.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
By the time he's a teenager, Harvey knows he's gay,
but doesn't tell any of his friends or family. The
summer after Harvey graduates high school, he's arrested in Central
Park for sunbathing with his shirt off in an area
that's known for cruising. It's the late forties. That's how
illegal it was to even consider LGBTQ. It's like arrested
(08:32):
for sunbathing in an area.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
Yeah, just like the suggestion of the potential for right.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
So in the late nineteen forties, nearly all of New
York's gay scene is conducted in some degree of secrecy.
So cruising is away for gay people to meet each
other when they can't just go to a bar or
club and walk up to someone. Harvey is arrested as
part of the general police sweep of the area and
winds up being released without facing charges, but the incident
stays with him. Harvey enrolls in the New York State
(08:58):
College for Teachers and Albany. He winds up being one
of the very few men in the entire school, and
this actually hadn't always been the case, but it's nineteen
forty seven, so all the men who would have filled
the upper classes were at war when they would have enrolled,
so he's one of very few men. Harvey himself had
been too young to enlist in college. Harvey writes a
(09:18):
column for the student newspaper and champions causes like integration
of fraternities and sororities like he's already politically minded. He
does well in some subjects, badly at others, and isn't
really sure he wants to be a teacher in the
first place. So he graduates in nineteen fifty one and
joins the Navy, and the Navy has a reputation of
attracting a lot of gay men, and Harvey finds that,
(09:40):
to some extent the stereotype is true. The war is over,
so he's posted for four years in San Diego, which
has a thriving gay singe, and for the first time
Harvey is able to have a full social life as
a gay man. After he leaves the Navy in nineteen
fifty six, twenty seven year old Harvey is a bit
unsure of what he wants to do with his life,
so he returns home to Long Island and gets a
(10:02):
job teaching high school history in a town near where
he grew up. Harvey enjoys working with the high school kids,
and his sense of humor makes a huge hit with them.
I mean, can you imagine Harvey Milk standing at the
front of your high school history class room and just
fucking hamming it up? And being so boisterous and gesturing
(10:23):
and loud and funny and making class actually fun.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
Right, Yeah, he's very charismatic. Charismatic, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah,
And that's hard to find it in a high school teacher,
I feel like, because they don't pay.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
Right right, the crush you crush those teachers down. But
being gay in the nineteen fifties is grounds for firing
a teacher, something Harvey is very aware of, and since
he's fairly active in New York's gay scene, he knows
that inevitably someone will eventually find out about his true identity,
so he quits teaching before he can get fired, before
there's a scandal. He gets a job at an insurance
(10:57):
agency and then as an analyst on Wall Street, so
he can do it all.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
But I mean that kind of loss, the loss of
talent because of that prejudice and fear basically.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
Right, that will come up again. So in nineteen sixty nine,
after five years at the Wall Street firm, Harvey's now
thirty nine, and he is, of course bored to death.
He's made some friends in the theater world who worked
on the runaway Broadway hit Hair, and they're about to
go to San Francisco to stage of production of the
musical there, so he up and quits his job and
(11:29):
tags along.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
Awesome.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
He loves everything about San Francisco, of course. He loves
the culture, which is still very much influenced by the
Summer of Love, which had been two years prior. He
loves the gay scene, which is the most open one
he's ever encountered. He had not actually participated in New
York Stonewall riots the year before, probably because of his
need to keep his identity hidden at his job. But
(11:52):
in San Francisco he starts becoming involved in the gay
rights movement and starts to take an interest in local politics.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
So he wasn't involved in Stonewall, but he's probably very
highly influenced by Stonewall.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
Absolutely like a year before. I'm sure, I'm sure he
wanted to be involved, right, and just I bet yeah.
The only thing he doesn't love about San Francisco is
his job, which is another one in finance. His boss
keeps telling him to get a haircut because he's got
that long, shaggy hair, and he's eventually fired after making
a passionate anti capitalist speech at a televised rally protesting
(12:24):
America's invasion of Cambodia. Wow, like to take a moment
to say yay to kissing Georg's death.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
Real quick along with the rest of the nation. Right,
I've never seen so much like it is kind of
amazing living in this time where because everyone is so
connected with social media, everyone is basically learning incredibly fast
about things like that that literally ten years ago it
(12:51):
was just simply not the case. It was like your
badass like smart friends were the ones. Anthony Bourdain was
the one that was like, fuck Kissinger, He's the worst one. Criminy,
He's the worst of all time. And everyone else is like,
what's he saying that for? And it's like nowadays everyone's like, yep,
we agree, Yeah, that's what everyone's saying.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
Don't argue it. Go look it up before you want
to argue that, Okay. In nineteen seventy one, when Harvey
is forty one years old, he meets a man named
Scott Smith on a trip to New York. Scott is
only twenty three, and at first he's rightfully very skeptical
of the older guy with the ponytail asking for his number,
but in the end he's won over by Harvey's charm
(13:29):
and sense of humor, and before Scott moves to San
Francisco to be with Harvey, Harvey writes him a letter
that says quote, You'll have my love and my cheer,
my laughter, my arms, my schmaltz, my joy, my warmth,
my heart. Oh so it's a true love.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
Nice. Those are perfect wedding vows.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
Oh yeah. Harvey and Scott moved together into an apartment
on Castro Street. The Castrow had once been full of
Irish and Italian immigrants who worked in factories and as
long shorman. I'm sure parts of your kilgariff klan.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
My grandfather was a long shoreman, and he was in
the long shoreman strike, oh in nineteen thirty and the
man who is he was locked arms with was shot
and killed by the cops.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
Yeah, like right next to him. Yep, holy shit. Yes.
But this time those jobs have dried up as the
neighborhood has changed, and so by nineteen seventy two it
is already established as San Francisco's gay hub. Harvey and
Scott open a camera store, which is like hello, dream job,
(14:34):
even though I don't know anything about cameras, where they
mostly develop film as a small business owner, Harvey becomes
active in neighborhood events. Every summer, Harvey helps organize a
Castro street fair, which is sort of an early version
of a Pride parade. So two things happen shortly after
the camera store opens. The first is Watergate. The cover
up and President Nixon's lies infuriate Harvey and he starts
(14:58):
paying even closer attention to politics. The second is that
a teacher comes into the store asking if she can
borrow an overhead projector because her school doesn't have enough,
and Harvey is furious that the city can't provide such
basic equipment to schools. You know, having been a teacher before,
I'm sure he's seen all that. These two events inspire
him to run for San Francisco's Board of Supervisors in
(15:20):
nineteen seventy three. So Harvey loses that first election, as
well as two others after it. There's just I think
a ton of candidates, so the vote was kind of split,
and he was kind of an unknown at this point.
But in that time when he loses, he becomes more
of a civic leader in the Castro and becomes more
well known. He and Scott, his partner, had been excluded
(15:41):
from the city's organization for small business owners because they
were gay. So Harvey starts his own group and it
attracts a huge number of local business owners. In nineteen
seventy five, Harvey's political odds drastically improve. A man named
George Moscone is elected mayor, and he wants to change
the way local elections work in San Francisco. So previously,
(16:04):
the entire city votes on every seat in the Board
of Supervisors. So everyone in the whole city votes for
the castro supervisor. Everyone in the whole city votes for
the presidio, you know, instead of people in the castro
voting in their own supervisor for the neighborhood people in
the persidio. You know, we get it right. George Mosconi
wants it to go the other way. He wants supervisors
(16:25):
to represent their particular district, which is like, if you
live in that district, you give a shit about it,
and it's people, and you.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
Know, who's actually taking action to benefit your district as
opposed to who wants to get a job and get
kickbacks or whatever exactly. You know, that's what I've heard
politicians do. There's no proofs, that's just my opinion.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
Allegedly, agency politics are corrupted evil, that's right, and this
is actually how a lot of big cities like Chicago
and New York operate. And so this proposition succeeds, and
at this point the nationwide gay rights movement has taken shape,
and so has, of course, its conservative opposition. One of
the first battle friends is in Florida, where a local
Miami ordnance outlaws discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
(17:10):
Here come the fucking Christian fundamentalists who but their nose
what doesn't fucking belong and vehemently oppose this law. And
they make pop singer Anita Bryant as their poster girl,
so she's the spokeswoman for Florida Orange Juice, and this
leads gay activists to boycott the product. And it also
leads to a famous incident in which an activist throws
(17:30):
a pie in her face at an event where she's
talking about her plans to open Anita Bryant Centers for
conversion Therapy.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
Oh fuck, so just truly evil.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
Yeah. In nineteen seventy seven, when he's forty seven years old,
with gay rights now a very prominent issue across the country,
Harvey mounts his fourth campaign, but this time it's to
specifically represent District five, where the Castro is, so now
he gets to set his sights up on the Castro.
It's still a highly contested race. The district is big
(18:04):
and encompasses other neighborhoods as well. There are two other
liberal candidates, one of them is a new lawyer who's
also gay. So this is actually a particularly momentous election
for San Francisco in and of itself. The fourth times
a charm Harvey wins the election to represent San Francisco's
District five. He's the first openly gay person to win
(18:25):
an election for public office in California.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
And the reaction is unlike anything anyone has ever seen
from a municipal election before. Obviously, it's fucking what is
the word historic? Historic? I want to say monumental and mountainous?
No important?
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Important is a good word mount rushmore as yes, well,
I mean it just is a complete sea change of
the culture. It's like truly never before, and to the
point where it was a lifestyle that was illegal merely
twenty thirty years before some places.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
Yeah, so the streets of the Castro are packed with revelers,
a Newscastro says, it looks like New Year's Eve, Harvey's
friend and campaign manager and Cronenberg, who is in that
documentary and is like my favorite person. I love her.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
I think I've told you about that part before. I
just didn't know her name.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
Yeah, yeah, she's incredible, she says. Quote. The feeling there
was just one of such total joy, and it was
more than just a candidate winning. It was the fact
that all of these lesbians and gay men throughout San
Francisco who had felt like they had no voice before
now had someone who represented them. End quote. Yeah, it's
not all good news, though. The toll of four political
(19:39):
campaigns is too much for Scott, and so he and
Harvey breakup. They remain partners in the camera store.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
Though.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
I don't think Harvey Milk ever slept, like he just
seems like someone who was always going and always drinking
a lot of coffee and like didn't ever.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
There's those people, man, there's those like that. They just
do it. They go and they have a real internal
machine that I cannot relate to in any way.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
They're like destined for greatness and there's no time for
sleeping and eating and you know, normal functions of life,
like naps Jesus. In the class of newcomers to the
Board of Supervisors, there are several other progressive candidates who
likely couldn't have been elected without the district based system.
There's also a conservative winner named Dan White. He's a
(20:28):
former police officer and current firefighter who resigns from his
firefighting job to sit on the board. Dan had run
a campaign around addressing crime, improving transportation, and general like
you know, all American family values type sentiment. And he
there's interviews with him on the documentary and he just
seems like kind of a small fish and a big pond,
(20:50):
you know what I mean, Like he's in the wrong
city state even.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
Yeah, he looks like the average white man in the
seventies kind of vibe where it's like the blonde kind
of side part right and the long sideburns and kind
of like, yeah, you know, family values totally.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
And he's like thirty one, which is wild. And this
is where Harvey Milk's story becomes a story about city politics.
One of Harvey's first acts in office is to sponsor
a bill that outlaws discrimination based on sexual orientation. He's
just fucking going for it absolutely. The bill has to
first pass a vote in a committee chaired by Dan White,
(21:26):
the Family Values Board member, and this will be a
tough sell. But Harvey tells Dan that if he votes
for the gay rights bill, Harvey will vote against a
bill that Dan doesn't want passed, which would have had
a home for troubled teens built in Dan's district. So
Dan keeps his word, and he speaks in favor of
the gay rights bill at his committee, helping it pass,
(21:47):
but Harvey doesn't keep his word. On the day the
board is supposed to vote on the use home, Dan
walks in confident that it will fail and that he'll
return to his constituents triumphant. But at the last minute,
Harvey chain just a vote, so the Home for Troubled
Teens passes. Dan will never get past this and will
(22:07):
vote to oppose every other bill that Harvey ever sponsors.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
Yeah, you made an enemy? Have you made an enemy
by doing that? Does he ever explain what the change
was about?
Speaker 1 (22:17):
I didn't see anything about that, but I'm assuming you
know you can't go against your values. If you think
there should be a place for troubled teens, You're not
going to vote no for it if you know.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
Yeah, but then you can't say you're gonna I mean this,
but I think this is the double bind of politics.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
Right, yeah. Absolutely. Meanwhile, having passed Dan's committee, Harvey's gay
rights bill is approved by the board and everyone except
Dan votes in favor of it. It's a huge moment
for Harvey and for gay people in San Francisco and
around the country. It's one of the first and most
meaningful local laws of its kind, and it means that
people can't be fired from their jobs for being gay.
(22:53):
Can you imagine. I mean, it's just, yeah, you can
get fired from any job because you're gay. Period.
Speaker 2 (22:57):
Well, and that was one of the most powerful parts
of this documentary, which obviously we really want you guys
to watch because it's so good. So people are canvassing
in the street explaining to like the neighborhood people what
this bill actually is, and they're like coming up to
In the documentary, I believe, it's like an older Chinese
(23:17):
couple and the person canvassing is like, do you mind
if I tell you a little bit about this bill,
and he's like, so if it starts with they can
fire teachers because they're gay, then can't they eventually fire
them for any other reason that they have found to
be This is how it starts, and you watch this
couple listening to this person explaining this to them and
(23:39):
being like, oh, yeah, we know about this kind of discrimination,
and they basically canvassed in this way of like going,
let's stop this kind of thinking now in its track.
Speaker 1 (23:50):
That was a really beautiful moment because you know, canvassing
is so scary to me, the idea, but to do
it in such a way of like with compassion and
and just the basics.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
Yeah, like trying to educate and being like understanding of
where the other people are coming from, of like either
you don't want to hear this because you believe it's
against your beliefs, Like on the face of it, if
you're talking about do you love gay people, and that
couples just like we don't know what we're talking about
and the answer has to be no. And then the
person's like no, no, no, let's like let's expand this
(24:23):
to what it really could be. And then it's kind
of like, oh, you're right, yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
Yeah, this is a bill about equality for everyone. Yeah,
you know, that's what it comes down to.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
The protection. Yeah, protection of it.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
Thank you. When Mayor Moscone signs the bill into law,
he uses a purple pen handed to him by Harvey
as reporters take pictures of both of them. Harvey's a
big ham in front of the camera, Like the photos
of him are pretty incredible. When the reporters ask Dan
what he thinks about the bill, Dan White says, quote,
this bill lets a man in a dress be a teacher.
(24:56):
People are getting angry end quote. So there's a.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
First of all, incorrect, right, inaccurate. It's just a bummer
because it's still with us, if not stronger now, and
that sucks.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
Harvey is also instrumental in the campaign against a state
ballot measure that would ban gay people from being teachers
at all. This is a big one. The bills proponents
use a lot of the same talking points that the
far right state politicians are using today, saying that gay
teachers will somehow teach homosexuality to their students. Harvey famously
(25:32):
responds to this by saying, quote, how do you teach
homosexuality like you'd teach French? End quote. As part of
the campaign against this ballot measure, Harvey famously encourages California's
gay people to come out to their family and friends
to make them realize that gay people aren't nefarious villains,
but people that they know and love. This popularizes the
(25:54):
phrase quote come out, come out wherever you are as
a gay right slogan. Measure fails by a landslide, and
Harvey throws a huge party on Castro Street. He generally
thrives in his role as supervisor, while Dan White seems
to be floundering. He has trouble keeping up with all
the background reading supervisors need to do for each bill,
(26:15):
and he's not allowed to work in two city jobs
at once, so he can't be a firefighter. Kind of
losing his identity. He's making significantly less money as a politician.
He tries to make up for the lost income by
opening a baked potato stand at Peer thirty nine, but
the business doesn't do well.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
Sorry, I just have to say, why can't we have that? Now?
Speaker 1 (26:36):
That's exactly what I thought, right, like a walking baked
potato Yes.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
Can we just remove ourselves from the topic at hands
and say, a baked potato stand?
Speaker 1 (26:46):
How about that?
Speaker 2 (26:47):
Outside of costco? Right, get your hot dogs over here?
How about some baked potatoes. It's so hard to get a.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
Hold of him outside a nightclub. If there's a there's
got to be a baked potato truck in like fucking Austiners.
You know there is, but can we bring it to La.
We need a baked potato truck, a.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
Baked potato truck, please, because it can't we can't just
go to steakhouses all the time. Yeah, wait till then.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
That's like literally the only place you can get them
now is a steakhouse. We're digressing.
Speaker 2 (27:13):
Let's get back to the topic at hand, because something
horrible is about to happen, as it always does in these.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
Stories, so the business fails. Harvey, on the other hand,
is a close ally of the mayors who seems like
a good dude and is popular with the other board members.
How could you not like this guy? He just seems
so gregarious and fun. Some of them poke fun at
Dan White for petulantly refusing to support any bill that
Harvey has anything to do with, Like it's clear what
he's being a baby about it. So on November tenth,
(27:41):
nineteen seventy eight, Dan White submits his resignation to may
Or Moscone. He said he'd rather go back to being
a firefighter, but only four days later he reconsiders and
he tells his supporters he's going to try to get
the mayor to reappoint him to his position. But then
what happens is four days later, on November eighteenth, the
Jonestown massacre takes place. In the middle of all of this,
(28:04):
it's crazy that this is part of that story, that
these are just momentous things upon momentous things.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
The seventies were truly insane, yeah, like in every way,
but yeah, this piece of San Francisco history is beyond
it's just like unbelievable.
Speaker 1 (28:20):
Yeah. And this, of course since shockwaves through San Francisco
because it had been home to the People's Temple cult
before it moved to Guyana. So there's I think a
huge majority of the people who were in Jonestown were
from the Bay Area. Yes, like, if not, you know,
if not all of them, most of them. The other
big thing is one of San Francisco's representatives in Congress,
(28:41):
Leo Ryan, was one of the visitors to Jonestown the
day of the Jonestown massacre. He was one of the
people who was coming in to check it out. On
their way escaping to the plane, he was shot and killed. Yeah,
so that's a big deal. The People's Temple had actually
been political allies to Mayor Moscone and Harvey as well,
(29:01):
so they had volunteered with both campaigns, and without their support,
Mousconi cannot afford to alienate San Francisco's sizeable gay vote
by reappointing Dan to his position. So when Dan goes
back and says he wants his job back, he knows
it'll ruffle the feathers of kind of his only ally left,
you know, right, So he says no to Dan White.
(29:26):
So on Monday, November twenty eighth, San Francisco's city officials
return from their Thanksgiving break, and later that day Mayor
Moscone is scheduled to appoint Dan White's replacement. That morning,
Dan sneaks into city Hall through a window in the
basement and goes to the Mayor's office. He asks the
secretary if he can see the mayor. Everyone is dismayed
(29:46):
that Dan is showing up just a few minutes before
the Mayor and his new appointee are supposed to go
before the press, but Mayor Moscone tells a secretary just
to send Dan in. After a brief conversation, Dan White
pulls out Smith and Wesson revolver from when he was
a police officer, which is loaded with hollow point bullets
and shoots Mayor Moscone twice in the chest and twice
(30:08):
in the head. The mayor's office is big and contains
several rooms, so this isn't like one wall over from
the secretary, so she does hear the shots, but she
runs to the window, thinking a car is backfired because
it's not happening right next to her. So Dan walks
quickly out of the Mayor's office to his own office.
He still has the keys. The keys work, he reloads,
(30:30):
and then he goes into Harvey's office. Dan asks Harvey
to come speak with him in his office. Harvey hesitates
a second but follows him, and once in the office,
Dan White shoots Harvey Milk three times in the chest
and twice in the head. Then he walks out of
the office, down the stairs and leaves the building. The
(30:51):
president of the Board of Supervisors is future United States
Senator Dianne Feinstein. Diane hears the shots and runs into
Harvey's office. She checks for a pulse, but he has
already died that evening, and you can watch the video
of this. A visibly shaken Dianne Feinstein makes an announcement
to the press.
Speaker 2 (31:10):
I saw that on TV when I was eight years old.
You did, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. It was that kind
of thing where like we watched the seven o'clock news
like that was just how it was. But it was
like I can remember watching that.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
It's jarring.
Speaker 2 (31:23):
She is so shaken. You don't see that anymore of
people being the ones that go to speak, because it's
like she found, yeah, her friend, her friend, and then
had to be the one that went and spoke yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
And the mayor, she's just.
Speaker 2 (31:38):
Something unthinkable has just happened. And then she's the one
that has to deliver the news. And you can hear
the press and the people respond, it's crazy. It's the
craziest moment is it is a.
Speaker 1 (31:50):
Crazy moment in history. And as president of the board,
she is now acting mayor of San Francisco. She says
that both Mayor George Mosconi and supervisor Harvey Milk have
been shot and killed. The reporter's gasp. You can hear
someone yell out Jesus Christ. That night a seemingly spontaneous
candlelight march starts in the Castro and goes to City Hall.
(32:12):
Thousands and thousands of San Francisco's attend. Joan Bias leads
the enormous crowd in singing Amazing Grace. In the days
that follow there are several public and private memorials for
both Mayor Moscone and Harvey. One of them is arranged
by Dianne Feinstein at Temple Emanu El, the most prominent
synagogue in San Francisco, but its chief rabbi does not
(32:36):
believe in gay rights, so a different rabbi has to
perform the service. So discriminated against even in death. So
very shortly after killing Harvey Milk and George Moscone, Dan
White turns himself into the police. He's charged with first
degree murder. Dan White's trial becomes infamous for the quote
twinkie defense. People remember his defense team as saying he
(32:58):
was at diminished capacity do the eating too much junk food.
That was their argument.
Speaker 2 (33:05):
They basically had him dead rights he turned himself in.
I think he confessed when he turned himself in. It
was that kind of thing where at the time it
feels like he was just like I did this and
there's no question, right, So what does a defense do
in that scenario? And it's like they cooked up this
thing that was like a true hail Mary kind of
(33:26):
like we got to put something out there because other
than that, they're just sending their client to prison, Right, you.
Speaker 1 (33:32):
Got to do something? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (33:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
In fact, his defense team does mention twinkies, but in
the context of the fact that Dan was very depressed.
They say Dan was deeply depressed when he committed the assassinations,
and they point to his poor diet as evidence of
his depression. Still, the press goes wild talking about twinkies,
and it's what most people remember about the trial. Ultimately,
(33:56):
the diminished capacity argument works, and Dan is found guilty
of manslaughter. Yeah, he is sentenced to seven years in
prison for assassinating two innocent people point blank. The mind boggles.
Speaker 2 (34:16):
Well, it's this idea that, like Harvey Milk fought for
those rights, he got people to believe in those movements.
But that doesn't mean that the like status quo was
going to change. And there are plenty of people who
saw that progression and went enough of this.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
But Moscone, you've murdered the liked mayor too, you know
what I mean? Like that to me is something's off there.
Speaker 2 (34:41):
I just think it's reflective of how actually not progressive
those times were as much as people are like the
Summer of Love and you know, everybody's taking action, but
it doesn't mean that the average person likes it or
wants it or I don't know. It's so upsetting and
it's so again that's like get saying. I remember it
was always on the news and it was always what
(35:04):
people were talking about because it was just so above.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
I would love to hear about the trial. I mean, maybe,
you know, like the Casey Anthony defense, maybe the prosecutors
just didn't do a great job of proving murder one.
Speaker 2 (35:16):
Or I wonder if they thought they didn't have to
because it was like it happened almost in front of everybody. Yeah, totally,
not that they didn't have to, but like they thought
maybe it was an open and shotcase and that there
would be no possibility that a defense like that would work.
Speaker 1 (35:31):
Absolutely so. The outrage at this verdict results in California
eliminating its diminished capacity law. After this, Dan serves five
years of his sentence before he is released, but two
years after that he dies by suicide. Oh no, yeah,
not a great life. At the very beginning of his
(35:53):
term in office, Harvey had tape recorded an audio will.
In it, Harvey says, quote, this is to be play
only in the event of my death by assassination. I
fully realize that a person who stands for what I
stand for, an activist, a gay activist, becomes the target
or the potential target of someone who is insecure or terrified, afraid,
(36:16):
or very disturb themselves. Knowing that I could be assassinated
at any moment, at any time, I feel it's important
that some people know my thoughts. Obviously, the one thing
that should happen if there is an assassination is I
cannot prevent some people from feeling angry and frustrated and mad,
but I hope they will take the frustration and madness
and instead of demonstrating or anything of that type, I
(36:38):
would hope that they would take the power, and I
hope that five ten, one hundred, one thousand would rise.
I would love to see every gay doctor come out.
I would like to see every gay lawyer, every gay judge,
every gay bureaucrat, every gay architect come out, stand up,
let the world know that would do more to end
prejudice overnight than anybody could imagine. I urge them to
(37:02):
do that. I urged them to come out only that
way while we start to achieve our rights. End quote.
And this idea becomes a cornerstone and the gay rights movement,
which made enormous achievements in Harvey's lifetime and makes even
more in the decades following his death, with his legacy
as part of its story. In two thousand and nine,
(37:22):
President Barack Obama posthumously awards Harvey Milk with the Presidential
Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor. And that
is the story of Harvey Milk, one of our nation's
first openly gay elected officials.
Speaker 2 (37:37):
Wow, great job, Thank you so awful.
Speaker 1 (37:42):
I know.
Speaker 2 (37:42):
Yeah, there's no words for that level of like mind
numbing tragedy upon tragedy and the way it played out.
It's just weird that that's in my like some of
my foundational memories or hearing a lot about that story. Yeah,
because he was a firemen, right, My dad was definitely
like paying attention and interested and that was what I
(38:05):
heard people talk about, and it was Yeah.
Speaker 1 (38:09):
It's terrible, So please donate to the ACLU if you can,
or get the help you need from them aclu dot org.
Speaker 2 (38:18):
And watch the Times of Harvey Milk documentary. You will
be so happy you did. There's some amazing real moments
that happened the debate. What I was talking about earlier
is Anne and Harvey being on the live news debate
with two guys who are from like the Christian Coalition,
and they were saying that gay people are pedophiles and
(38:39):
they were like, no, they're not, and they were like,
what's your proof? And she goes she does that rantom
like the FBI yia. She has that accent is like
the best thing you've ever seen.
Speaker 1 (38:50):
Ninety to ninety five men, I might add.
Speaker 2 (38:53):
She's so badass straight men.
Speaker 1 (38:55):
Yeah, yeah, watch that and let's all get inspired. Let's campaign,
let's be activists do this, and also let's stay saxy
and don't get murdered. Goodbye, Elvis, Do you want a cookie?
Speaker 2 (39:18):
This has been an exactly right production.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
Our senior producer is Alejandra Keck.
Speaker 2 (39:22):
Our managing producers Hannah Kyle Crichton.
Speaker 1 (39:25):
Our editor is Aristotle Acevedo.
Speaker 2 (39:27):
This episode was mixed by Leanna scuilach.
Speaker 1 (39:30):
Our researchers are Mareon, mcclashan, and Ali Elkin.
Speaker 2 (39:33):
Email your hometowns to My Favorite Murder at gmail dot com.
Speaker 1 (39:36):
Follow the show on Instagram and Facebook at my Favorite
Murder and Twitter at My favor Murder Boybye
Las Hell.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Love.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
Welcome to my Favorite Murder. That's Georgia Hartstar, that's Karen Kilgariff.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
This is one of our special holiday episodes.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Yeah, a story each a nice donation so we can
take a couple of minutes off to celebrate the holidays
with our families.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
And yet still stay with you in your childhood bedroom
while you work through some serious shit.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
And guess what, we'll be doing the same.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
So hey, we're with you.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
It's like we're together.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Always.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
So hey, we have an announcement to make We are
no longer working with Wondery Amazon.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Yes and not. Among other things, means no more early
release episodes, which means everybody is listening together, just like
the good old days, which we love.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
I love that so Exactly Right has always been owned
and operated by me and Karen. We're so proud of that.
So thank you guys for sticking by us. We appreciate you.
We really can't wait to see what's next for Exactly Right.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
Also, thank you to our staff we have. I mean,
we talk about them all the time, but the staff
is exactly right, the people that make this network go.
I mean, we just couldn't be doing any of this
without them. We have an amazing group of people that
we work with and for and we're so proud of
the work they do. And yeah, we just we feel
(01:45):
like the future is ours. Also, here's some more good news.
We are continuing our weekly holiday donation tradition. This week
we are donating to the ACLU, specifically for their work
for the rights for the LGBTQ community. The acl YOU
works to ensure that lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer
people can live openly without discrimination and enjoy equal rights,
(02:08):
personal autonomy, and freedom of expression and association. If you
want more information about the work the ACLU does for
the LGBTQ community, you can go to ACLU dot org.
And to help them out with that work, we're going
to give ten thousand dollars, And if you have any
extra this holiday season or afterwards to give, we'd love
(02:30):
for you to give to yay, hooray.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
Hooray gay rights. That's right, hey, speaking of Should I
get right into my story?
Speaker 2 (02:40):
Oh my god, the fastest ever?
Speaker 1 (02:42):
Yes, because and yes I plan this. This is the
story of Harvey Milk. Are you how have we You're
already tearing up? How have we not covered this?
Speaker 2 (02:57):
I mean, this is a hometown story of my there's
a hometown for you. Yeah, such a big deal and
one of my favorite documentaries.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
Oh, I was literally just watching it. It's amazing. It's
called The Times of Harvey Milk. Yeah, it's timeless. And
there's firefighters from San Francisco in this story too, right,
so like absolutely hits home. So please chime in. Hannah
was like, how have we not done this story? I
was like, how have we not done this story? How
have we not done this story? Because it is legendary,
(03:28):
He's a legend.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
The tragedy of this life being cut short and the
other lives involved, I'll.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
Just what you get to the tragedy at this I
think cut Short is on par, if not more so
to me than RFK because the good that this person
did and was going to continue to do, obviously, like
in such a short amount of time. I mean, it
is nothing short of a superhero.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
Yeah. And if it wasn't for that documentary, Like I
feel like watching that documentary, I was downloaded with the
like I just wouldn't have known it in any other
way obviously, right, they never taught that in school right
when I was growing I mean of course they didn't.
It was so backwards and I didn't understand how close
we were to it at that time. Yeah, it was
(04:16):
like he threw up a full bloody block and turned
sentiment within San Francisco, which is a very at the time,
it was a very segregated and very kind of like
the Irish are over here, the Chinese are in Chinatown, and.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
No one's thinking of anyone. None of the minorities in
that neighborhood are getting rights at all, especially not in
Castro and with gay people of course. Yeah, you know,
it's so crazy. I was going to say that I
didn't learn about this story in school, which is a shame.
I learned about this from a Dead Kennedy's album, a
(04:51):
Dead Kennedy song called I Thought the Law and I Won.
It just gives you all this, you know, in this
punk rock form information about the and I was like,
who's this Harvey Milk, who's this guy? Like, what's this
twinkie defense? You know? And that's how we fucking learned
about it. It's through punk rock. Like, that's how shitty
our fucking school system is. I had to learn about
history through Jello Biofra.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
And that's also how important punk rock was, right, and
I guess is but like especially at that time, really
actually going, oh I'm going to say something that's actually
gonna matter.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
Yeah, yeah, so very cool. Thank you Dead Kennedy's good job,
who are from the Bay Area as well. So the
main sources I used for this story are the documentary
The Times of Harvey Milk, which is on Max and
a book called Harvey Milk His Lives and Death by
Lillian Vaderman, and the rest of the sources can be
found in the show notes. So early life. Harvey Milk
(05:45):
is born in nineteen thirty in Woodmere, New York, which
is a small town on Long Island. His grandparents owned
a modest dry goods store that became Long Island's first
department store, and were some of the founding members of
the woodmeres still thriving Jewish community. They helped to build
its first synagogue. But their son, Harvey's father, William, is
(06:05):
the family rebel. William had gone off to fight in
World War One and came back with a tattoo, which
is like bad enough for any kid, but in Jewish
culture just very frowned upon.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
Isn't it. You? Can't be buried in a Jewish cemetery
if you.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
Have a tattoo, that's right, So goodbye Jewish cemeteries to me.
I mean, I don't know how it works these days,
you know. I'm sure they have to be lenient somewhat
on those like at least for non conservative cemeteries.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
Please, rabbis in the listening audience, if you have any
information about any updates.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
Or not, we'd love to hear about it, definitely.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
And Georgia would love to talk to you about joining
your congregation community in a congregation.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
It's congregation, okay, So it's nineteen eighteen. The tattoo is
a huge deale. Still, William winds up working in the
family store, but he has a fraught relationship with Harvey's grandparents,
which also makes him of a little father to Harvey
and Harvey's brother Robert when they eventually come around. Harvey's
mother is named Minerva, which bring it back, so good Minnie,
(07:09):
and everyone calls her a mini How cute is that
she's an early feminist and had been one of the
very first women to enlist in the first women's branch
of the Navy in World War One. Wow, so now
you're starting to see where he gets his politics from.
Minnie is passionate about social justice and community service and
passes his passion onto her younger son, Harvey, who is
(07:31):
such a cutie in the documentary as a kid with
his big ears and just like this skinny little Jewish kid,
it's very cute. As a child, Harvey spends all of
his free time and pocket money seeing movies at Woodmere's
little theater. But one day he tells his brother that
he loves going to the movies, not really because of
the features or the shorts or the newsreels. He doesn't
(07:51):
care about watching stuff, but because the owner of the
theater holds a raffle for the children before each screening,
and when Harvey wins the raffle, he gets to up
to the front of the theater and ham it up
in front of the audience while he collects his prize.
So he just likes being on stage.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
Sure.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
By the time he's a teenager, Harvey knows he's gay,
but doesn't tell any of his friends or family. The
summer after Harvey graduates high school, he's arrested in Central
Park for sunbathing with his shirt off in an area
that's known for cruising. It's the late forties. That's how
illegal it was to even consider LGBTQ. It's like arrested
(08:32):
for sunbathing in an area.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
Yeah, just like the suggestion of the potential for right.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
So in the late nineteen forties, nearly all of New
York's gay scene is conducted in some degree of secrecy.
So cruising is away for gay people to meet each
other when they can't just go to a bar or
club and walk up to someone. Harvey is arrested as
part of the general police sweep of the area and
winds up being released without facing charges, but the incident
stays with him. Harvey enrolls in the New York State
(08:58):
College for Teachers and Albany. He winds up being one
of the very few men in the entire school, and
this actually hadn't always been the case, but it's nineteen
forty seven, so all the men who would have filled
the upper classes were at war when they would have enrolled,
so he's one of very few men. Harvey himself had
been too young to enlist in college. Harvey writes a
(09:18):
column for the student newspaper and champions causes like integration
of fraternities and sororities like he's already politically minded. He
does well in some subjects, badly at others, and isn't
really sure he wants to be a teacher in the
first place. So he graduates in nineteen fifty one and
joins the Navy, and the Navy has a reputation of
attracting a lot of gay men, and Harvey finds that,
(09:40):
to some extent the stereotype is true. The war is over,
so he's posted for four years in San Diego, which
has a thriving gay singe, and for the first time
Harvey is able to have a full social life as
a gay man. After he leaves the Navy in nineteen
fifty six, twenty seven year old Harvey is a bit
unsure of what he wants to do with his life,
so he returns home to Long Island and gets a
(10:02):
job teaching high school history in a town near where
he grew up. Harvey enjoys working with the high school kids,
and his sense of humor makes a huge hit with them.
I mean, can you imagine Harvey Milk standing at the
front of your high school history class room and just
fucking hamming it up? And being so boisterous and gesturing
(10:23):
and loud and funny and making class actually fun.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
Right, Yeah, he's very charismatic. Charismatic, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah,
And that's hard to find it in a high school teacher,
I feel like, because they don't pay.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
Right right, the crush you crush those teachers down. But
being gay in the nineteen fifties is grounds for firing
a teacher, something Harvey is very aware of, and since
he's fairly active in New York's gay scene, he knows
that inevitably someone will eventually find out about his true identity,
so he quits teaching before he can get fired, before
there's a scandal. He gets a job at an insurance
(10:57):
agency and then as an analyst on Wall Street, so
he can do it all.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
But I mean that kind of loss, the loss of
talent because of that prejudice and fear basically.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
Right, that will come up again. So in nineteen sixty nine,
after five years at the Wall Street firm, Harvey's now
thirty nine, and he is, of course bored to death.
He's made some friends in the theater world who worked
on the runaway Broadway hit Hair, and they're about to
go to San Francisco to stage of production of the
musical there, so he up and quits his job and
(11:29):
tags along.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
Awesome.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
He loves everything about San Francisco, of course. He loves
the culture, which is still very much influenced by the
Summer of Love, which had been two years prior. He
loves the gay scene, which is the most open one
he's ever encountered. He had not actually participated in New
York Stonewall riots the year before, probably because of his
need to keep his identity hidden at his job. But
(11:52):
in San Francisco he starts becoming involved in the gay
rights movement and starts to take an interest in local politics.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
So he wasn't involved in Stonewall, but he's probably very
highly influenced by Stonewall.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
Absolutely like a year before. I'm sure, I'm sure he
wanted to be involved, right, and just I bet yeah.
The only thing he doesn't love about San Francisco is
his job, which is another one in finance. His boss
keeps telling him to get a haircut because he's got
that long, shaggy hair, and he's eventually fired after making
a passionate anti capitalist speech at a televised rally protesting
(12:24):
America's invasion of Cambodia. Wow, like to take a moment
to say yay to kissing Georg's death.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
Real quick along with the rest of the nation. Right,
I've never seen so much like it is kind of
amazing living in this time where because everyone is so
connected with social media, everyone is basically learning incredibly fast
about things like that that literally ten years ago it
(12:51):
was just simply not the case. It was like your
badass like smart friends were the ones. Anthony Bourdain was
the one that was like, fuck Kissinger, He's the worst one. Criminy,
He's the worst of all time. And everyone else is like,
what's he saying that for? And it's like nowadays everyone's like, yep,
we agree, Yeah, that's what everyone's saying.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
Don't argue it. Go look it up before you want
to argue that, Okay. In nineteen seventy one, when Harvey
is forty one years old, he meets a man named
Scott Smith on a trip to New York. Scott is
only twenty three, and at first he's rightfully very skeptical
of the older guy with the ponytail asking for his number,
but in the end he's won over by Harvey's charm
(13:29):
and sense of humor, and before Scott moves to San
Francisco to be with Harvey, Harvey writes him a letter
that says quote, You'll have my love and my cheer,
my laughter, my arms, my schmaltz, my joy, my warmth,
my heart. Oh so it's a true love.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
Nice. Those are perfect wedding vows.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
Oh yeah. Harvey and Scott moved together into an apartment
on Castro Street. The Castrow had once been full of
Irish and Italian immigrants who worked in factories and as
long shorman. I'm sure parts of your kilgariff klan.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
My grandfather was a long shoreman, and he was in
the long shoreman strike, oh in nineteen thirty and the
man who is he was locked arms with was shot
and killed by the cops.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
Yeah, like right next to him. Yep, holy shit. Yes.
But this time those jobs have dried up as the
neighborhood has changed, and so by nineteen seventy two it
is already established as San Francisco's gay hub. Harvey and
Scott open a camera store, which is like hello, dream job,
(14:34):
even though I don't know anything about cameras, where they
mostly develop film as a small business owner, Harvey becomes
active in neighborhood events. Every summer, Harvey helps organize a
Castro street fair, which is sort of an early version
of a Pride parade. So two things happen shortly after
the camera store opens. The first is Watergate. The cover
up and President Nixon's lies infuriate Harvey and he starts
(14:58):
paying even closer attention to politics. The second is that
a teacher comes into the store asking if she can
borrow an overhead projector because her school doesn't have enough,
and Harvey is furious that the city can't provide such
basic equipment to schools. You know, having been a teacher before,
I'm sure he's seen all that. These two events inspire
him to run for San Francisco's Board of Supervisors in
(15:20):
nineteen seventy three. So Harvey loses that first election, as
well as two others after it. There's just I think
a ton of candidates, so the vote was kind of split,
and he was kind of an unknown at this point.
But in that time when he loses, he becomes more
of a civic leader in the Castro and becomes more
well known. He and Scott, his partner, had been excluded
(15:41):
from the city's organization for small business owners because they
were gay. So Harvey starts his own group and it
attracts a huge number of local business owners. In nineteen
seventy five, Harvey's political odds drastically improve. A man named
George Moscone is elected mayor, and he wants to change
the way local elections work in San Francisco. So previously,
(16:04):
the entire city votes on every seat in the Board
of Supervisors. So everyone in the whole city votes for
the castro supervisor. Everyone in the whole city votes for
the presidio, you know, instead of people in the castro
voting in their own supervisor for the neighborhood people in
the persidio. You know, we get it right. George Mosconi
wants it to go the other way. He wants supervisors
(16:25):
to represent their particular district, which is like, if you
live in that district, you give a shit about it,
and it's people, and you.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
Know, who's actually taking action to benefit your district as
opposed to who wants to get a job and get
kickbacks or whatever exactly. You know, that's what I've heard
politicians do. There's no proofs, that's just my opinion.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
Allegedly, agency politics are corrupted evil, that's right, and this
is actually how a lot of big cities like Chicago
and New York operate. And so this proposition succeeds, and
at this point the nationwide gay rights movement has taken shape,
and so has, of course, its conservative opposition. One of
the first battle friends is in Florida, where a local
Miami ordnance outlaws discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
(17:10):
Here come the fucking Christian fundamentalists who but their nose
what doesn't fucking belong and vehemently oppose this law. And
they make pop singer Anita Bryant as their poster girl,
so she's the spokeswoman for Florida Orange Juice, and this
leads gay activists to boycott the product. And it also
leads to a famous incident in which an activist throws
(17:30):
a pie in her face at an event where she's
talking about her plans to open Anita Bryant Centers for
conversion Therapy.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
Oh fuck, so just truly evil.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
Yeah. In nineteen seventy seven, when he's forty seven years old,
with gay rights now a very prominent issue across the country,
Harvey mounts his fourth campaign, but this time it's to
specifically represent District five, where the Castro is, so now
he gets to set his sights up on the Castro.
It's still a highly contested race. The district is big
(18:04):
and encompasses other neighborhoods as well. There are two other
liberal candidates, one of them is a new lawyer who's
also gay. So this is actually a particularly momentous election
for San Francisco in and of itself. The fourth times
a charm Harvey wins the election to represent San Francisco's
District five. He's the first openly gay person to win
(18:25):
an election for public office in California.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
And the reaction is unlike anything anyone has ever seen
from a municipal election before. Obviously, it's fucking what is
the word historic? Historic? I want to say monumental and mountainous?
No important?
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Important is a good word mount rushmore as yes, well,
I mean it just is a complete sea change of
the culture. It's like truly never before, and to the
point where it was a lifestyle that was illegal merely
twenty thirty years before some places.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
Yeah, so the streets of the Castro are packed with revelers,
a Newscastro says, it looks like New Year's Eve, Harvey's
friend and campaign manager and Cronenberg, who is in that
documentary and is like my favorite person. I love her.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
I think I've told you about that part before. I
just didn't know her name.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
Yeah, yeah, she's incredible, she says. Quote. The feeling there
was just one of such total joy, and it was
more than just a candidate winning. It was the fact
that all of these lesbians and gay men throughout San
Francisco who had felt like they had no voice before
now had someone who represented them. End quote. Yeah, it's
not all good news, though. The toll of four political
(19:39):
campaigns is too much for Scott, and so he and
Harvey breakup. They remain partners in the camera store.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
Though.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
I don't think Harvey Milk ever slept, like he just
seems like someone who was always going and always drinking
a lot of coffee and like didn't ever.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
There's those people, man, there's those like that. They just
do it. They go and they have a real internal
machine that I cannot relate to in any way.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
They're like destined for greatness and there's no time for
sleeping and eating and you know, normal functions of life,
like naps Jesus. In the class of newcomers to the
Board of Supervisors, there are several other progressive candidates who
likely couldn't have been elected without the district based system.
There's also a conservative winner named Dan White. He's a
(20:28):
former police officer and current firefighter who resigns from his
firefighting job to sit on the board. Dan had run
a campaign around addressing crime, improving transportation, and general like
you know, all American family values type sentiment. And he
there's interviews with him on the documentary and he just
seems like kind of a small fish and a big pond,
(20:50):
you know what I mean, Like he's in the wrong
city state even.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
Yeah, he looks like the average white man in the
seventies kind of vibe where it's like the blonde kind
of side part right and the long sideburns and kind
of like, yeah, you know, family values totally.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
And he's like thirty one, which is wild. And this
is where Harvey Milk's story becomes a story about city politics.
One of Harvey's first acts in office is to sponsor
a bill that outlaws discrimination based on sexual orientation. He's
just fucking going for it absolutely. The bill has to
first pass a vote in a committee chaired by Dan White,
(21:26):
the Family Values Board member, and this will be a
tough sell. But Harvey tells Dan that if he votes
for the gay rights bill, Harvey will vote against a
bill that Dan doesn't want passed, which would have had
a home for troubled teens built in Dan's district. So
Dan keeps his word, and he speaks in favor of
the gay rights bill at his committee, helping it pass,
(21:47):
but Harvey doesn't keep his word. On the day the
board is supposed to vote on the use home, Dan
walks in confident that it will fail and that he'll
return to his constituents triumphant. But at the last minute,
Harvey chain just a vote, so the Home for Troubled
Teens passes. Dan will never get past this and will
(22:07):
vote to oppose every other bill that Harvey ever sponsors.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
Yeah, you made an enemy? Have you made an enemy
by doing that? Does he ever explain what the change
was about?
Speaker 1 (22:17):
I didn't see anything about that, but I'm assuming you
know you can't go against your values. If you think
there should be a place for troubled teens, You're not
going to vote no for it if you know.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
Yeah, but then you can't say you're gonna I mean this,
but I think this is the double bind of politics.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
Right, yeah. Absolutely. Meanwhile, having passed Dan's committee, Harvey's gay
rights bill is approved by the board and everyone except
Dan votes in favor of it. It's a huge moment
for Harvey and for gay people in San Francisco and
around the country. It's one of the first and most
meaningful local laws of its kind, and it means that
people can't be fired from their jobs for being gay.
(22:53):
Can you imagine. I mean, it's just, yeah, you can
get fired from any job because you're gay. Period.
Speaker 2 (22:57):
Well, and that was one of the most powerful parts
of this documentary, which obviously we really want you guys
to watch because it's so good. So people are canvassing
in the street explaining to like the neighborhood people what
this bill actually is, and they're like coming up to
In the documentary, I believe, it's like an older Chinese
(23:17):
couple and the person canvassing is like, do you mind
if I tell you a little bit about this bill,
and he's like, so if it starts with they can
fire teachers because they're gay, then can't they eventually fire
them for any other reason that they have found to
be This is how it starts, and you watch this
couple listening to this person explaining this to them and
(23:39):
being like, oh, yeah, we know about this kind of discrimination,
and they basically canvassed in this way of like going,
let's stop this kind of thinking now in its track.
Speaker 1 (23:50):
That was a really beautiful moment because you know, canvassing
is so scary to me, the idea, but to do
it in such a way of like with compassion and
and just the basics.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
Yeah, like trying to educate and being like understanding of
where the other people are coming from, of like either
you don't want to hear this because you believe it's
against your beliefs, Like on the face of it, if
you're talking about do you love gay people, and that
couples just like we don't know what we're talking about
and the answer has to be no. And then the
person's like no, no, no, let's like let's expand this
(24:23):
to what it really could be. And then it's kind
of like, oh, you're right, yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
Yeah, this is a bill about equality for everyone. Yeah,
you know, that's what it comes down to.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
The protection. Yeah, protection of it.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
Thank you. When Mayor Moscone signs the bill into law,
he uses a purple pen handed to him by Harvey
as reporters take pictures of both of them. Harvey's a
big ham in front of the camera, Like the photos
of him are pretty incredible. When the reporters ask Dan
what he thinks about the bill, Dan White says, quote,
this bill lets a man in a dress be a teacher.
(24:56):
People are getting angry end quote. So there's a.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
First of all, incorrect, right, inaccurate. It's just a bummer
because it's still with us, if not stronger now, and
that sucks.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
Harvey is also instrumental in the campaign against a state
ballot measure that would ban gay people from being teachers
at all. This is a big one. The bills proponents
use a lot of the same talking points that the
far right state politicians are using today, saying that gay
teachers will somehow teach homosexuality to their students. Harvey famously
(25:32):
responds to this by saying, quote, how do you teach
homosexuality like you'd teach French? End quote. As part of
the campaign against this ballot measure, Harvey famously encourages California's
gay people to come out to their family and friends
to make them realize that gay people aren't nefarious villains,
but people that they know and love. This popularizes the
(25:54):
phrase quote come out, come out wherever you are as
a gay right slogan. Measure fails by a landslide, and
Harvey throws a huge party on Castro Street. He generally
thrives in his role as supervisor, while Dan White seems
to be floundering. He has trouble keeping up with all
the background reading supervisors need to do for each bill,
(26:15):
and he's not allowed to work in two city jobs
at once, so he can't be a firefighter. Kind of
losing his identity. He's making significantly less money as a politician.
He tries to make up for the lost income by
opening a baked potato stand at Peer thirty nine, but
the business doesn't do well.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
Sorry, I just have to say, why can't we have that? Now?
Speaker 1 (26:36):
That's exactly what I thought, right, like a walking baked
potato Yes.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
Can we just remove ourselves from the topic at hands
and say, a baked potato stand?
Speaker 1 (26:46):
How about that?
Speaker 2 (26:47):
Outside of costco? Right, get your hot dogs over here?
How about some baked potatoes. It's so hard to get a.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
Hold of him outside a nightclub. If there's a there's
got to be a baked potato truck in like fucking Austiners.
You know there is, but can we bring it to La.
We need a baked potato truck, a.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
Baked potato truck, please, because it can't we can't just
go to steakhouses all the time. Yeah, wait till then.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
That's like literally the only place you can get them
now is a steakhouse. We're digressing.
Speaker 2 (27:13):
Let's get back to the topic at hand, because something
horrible is about to happen, as it always does in these.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
Stories, so the business fails. Harvey, on the other hand,
is a close ally of the mayors who seems like
a good dude and is popular with the other board members.
How could you not like this guy? He just seems
so gregarious and fun. Some of them poke fun at
Dan White for petulantly refusing to support any bill that
Harvey has anything to do with, Like it's clear what
he's being a baby about it. So on November tenth,
(27:41):
nineteen seventy eight, Dan White submits his resignation to may
Or Moscone. He said he'd rather go back to being
a firefighter, but only four days later he reconsiders and
he tells his supporters he's going to try to get
the mayor to reappoint him to his position. But then
what happens is four days later, on November eighteenth, the
Jonestown massacre takes place. In the middle of all of this,
(28:04):
it's crazy that this is part of that story, that
these are just momentous things upon momentous things.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
The seventies were truly insane, yeah, like in every way,
but yeah, this piece of San Francisco history is beyond
it's just like unbelievable.
Speaker 1 (28:20):
Yeah. And this, of course since shockwaves through San Francisco
because it had been home to the People's Temple cult
before it moved to Guyana. So there's I think a
huge majority of the people who were in Jonestown were
from the Bay Area. Yes, like, if not, you know,
if not all of them, most of them. The other
big thing is one of San Francisco's representatives in Congress,
(28:41):
Leo Ryan, was one of the visitors to Jonestown the
day of the Jonestown massacre. He was one of the
people who was coming in to check it out. On
their way escaping to the plane, he was shot and killed. Yeah,
so that's a big deal. The People's Temple had actually
been political allies to Mayor Moscone and Harvey as well,
(29:01):
so they had volunteered with both campaigns, and without their support,
Mousconi cannot afford to alienate San Francisco's sizeable gay vote
by reappointing Dan to his position. So when Dan goes
back and says he wants his job back, he knows
it'll ruffle the feathers of kind of his only ally left,
you know, right, So he says no to Dan White.
(29:26):
So on Monday, November twenty eighth, San Francisco's city officials
return from their Thanksgiving break, and later that day Mayor
Moscone is scheduled to appoint Dan White's replacement. That morning,
Dan sneaks into city Hall through a window in the
basement and goes to the Mayor's office. He asks the
secretary if he can see the mayor. Everyone is dismayed
(29:46):
that Dan is showing up just a few minutes before
the Mayor and his new appointee are supposed to go
before the press, but Mayor Moscone tells a secretary just
to send Dan in. After a brief conversation, Dan White
pulls out Smith and Wesson revolver from when he was
a police officer, which is loaded with hollow point bullets
and shoots Mayor Moscone twice in the chest and twice
(30:08):
in the head. The mayor's office is big and contains
several rooms, so this isn't like one wall over from
the secretary, so she does hear the shots, but she
runs to the window, thinking a car is backfired because
it's not happening right next to her. So Dan walks
quickly out of the Mayor's office to his own office.
He still has the keys. The keys work, he reloads,
(30:30):
and then he goes into Harvey's office. Dan asks Harvey
to come speak with him in his office. Harvey hesitates
a second but follows him, and once in the office,
Dan White shoots Harvey Milk three times in the chest
and twice in the head. Then he walks out of
the office, down the stairs and leaves the building. The
(30:51):
president of the Board of Supervisors is future United States
Senator Dianne Feinstein. Diane hears the shots and runs into
Harvey's office. She checks for a pulse, but he has
already died that evening, and you can watch the video
of this. A visibly shaken Dianne Feinstein makes an announcement
to the press.
Speaker 2 (31:10):
I saw that on TV when I was eight years old.
You did, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. It was that kind
of thing where like we watched the seven o'clock news
like that was just how it was. But it was
like I can remember watching that.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
It's jarring.
Speaker 2 (31:23):
She is so shaken. You don't see that anymore of
people being the ones that go to speak, because it's
like she found, yeah, her friend, her friend, and then
had to be the one that went and spoke yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
And the mayor, she's just.
Speaker 2 (31:38):
Something unthinkable has just happened. And then she's the one
that has to deliver the news. And you can hear
the press and the people respond, it's crazy. It's the
craziest moment is it is a.
Speaker 1 (31:50):
Crazy moment in history. And as president of the board,
she is now acting mayor of San Francisco. She says
that both Mayor George Mosconi and supervisor Harvey Milk have
been shot and killed. The reporter's gasp. You can hear
someone yell out Jesus Christ. That night a seemingly spontaneous
candlelight march starts in the Castro and goes to City Hall.
(32:12):
Thousands and thousands of San Francisco's attend. Joan Bias leads
the enormous crowd in singing Amazing Grace. In the days
that follow there are several public and private memorials for
both Mayor Moscone and Harvey. One of them is arranged
by Dianne Feinstein at Temple Emanu El, the most prominent
synagogue in San Francisco, but its chief rabbi does not
(32:36):
believe in gay rights, so a different rabbi has to
perform the service. So discriminated against even in death. So
very shortly after killing Harvey Milk and George Moscone, Dan
White turns himself into the police. He's charged with first
degree murder. Dan White's trial becomes infamous for the quote
twinkie defense. People remember his defense team as saying he
(32:58):
was at diminished capacity do the eating too much junk food.
That was their argument.
Speaker 2 (33:05):
They basically had him dead rights he turned himself in.
I think he confessed when he turned himself in. It
was that kind of thing where at the time it
feels like he was just like I did this and
there's no question, right, So what does a defense do
in that scenario? And it's like they cooked up this
thing that was like a true hail Mary kind of
(33:26):
like we got to put something out there because other
than that, they're just sending their client to prison, Right, you.
Speaker 1 (33:32):
Got to do something? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (33:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
In fact, his defense team does mention twinkies, but in
the context of the fact that Dan was very depressed.
They say Dan was deeply depressed when he committed the assassinations,
and they point to his poor diet as evidence of
his depression. Still, the press goes wild talking about twinkies,
and it's what most people remember about the trial. Ultimately,
(33:56):
the diminished capacity argument works, and Dan is found guilty
of manslaughter. Yeah, he is sentenced to seven years in
prison for assassinating two innocent people point blank. The mind boggles.
Speaker 2 (34:16):
Well, it's this idea that, like Harvey Milk fought for
those rights, he got people to believe in those movements.
But that doesn't mean that the like status quo was
going to change. And there are plenty of people who
saw that progression and went enough of this.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
But Moscone, you've murdered the liked mayor too, you know
what I mean? Like that to me is something's off there.
Speaker 2 (34:41):
I just think it's reflective of how actually not progressive
those times were as much as people are like the
Summer of Love and you know, everybody's taking action, but
it doesn't mean that the average person likes it or
wants it or I don't know. It's so upsetting and
it's so again that's like get saying. I remember it
was always on the news and it was always what
(35:04):
people were talking about because it was just so above.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
I would love to hear about the trial. I mean, maybe,
you know, like the Casey Anthony defense, maybe the prosecutors
just didn't do a great job of proving murder one.
Speaker 2 (35:16):
Or I wonder if they thought they didn't have to
because it was like it happened almost in front of everybody. Yeah, totally,
not that they didn't have to, but like they thought
maybe it was an open and shotcase and that there
would be no possibility that a defense like that would work.
Speaker 1 (35:31):
Absolutely so. The outrage at this verdict results in California
eliminating its diminished capacity law. After this, Dan serves five
years of his sentence before he is released, but two
years after that he dies by suicide. Oh no, yeah,
not a great life. At the very beginning of his
(35:53):
term in office, Harvey had tape recorded an audio will.
In it, Harvey says, quote, this is to be play
only in the event of my death by assassination. I
fully realize that a person who stands for what I
stand for, an activist, a gay activist, becomes the target
or the potential target of someone who is insecure or terrified, afraid,
(36:16):
or very disturb themselves. Knowing that I could be assassinated
at any moment, at any time, I feel it's important
that some people know my thoughts. Obviously, the one thing
that should happen if there is an assassination is I
cannot prevent some people from feeling angry and frustrated and mad,
but I hope they will take the frustration and madness
and instead of demonstrating or anything of that type, I
(36:38):
would hope that they would take the power, and I
hope that five ten, one hundred, one thousand would rise.
I would love to see every gay doctor come out.
I would like to see every gay lawyer, every gay judge,
every gay bureaucrat, every gay architect come out, stand up,
let the world know that would do more to end
prejudice overnight than anybody could imagine. I urge them to
(37:02):
do that. I urged them to come out only that
way while we start to achieve our rights. End quote.
And this idea becomes a cornerstone and the gay rights movement,
which made enormous achievements in Harvey's lifetime and makes even
more in the decades following his death, with his legacy
as part of its story. In two thousand and nine,
(37:22):
President Barack Obama posthumously awards Harvey Milk with the Presidential
Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor. And that
is the story of Harvey Milk, one of our nation's
first openly gay elected officials.
Speaker 2 (37:37):
Wow, great job, Thank you so awful.
Speaker 1 (37:42):
I know.
Speaker 2 (37:42):
Yeah, there's no words for that level of like mind
numbing tragedy upon tragedy and the way it played out.
It's just weird that that's in my like some of
my foundational memories or hearing a lot about that story. Yeah,
because he was a firemen, right, My dad was definitely
like paying attention and interested and that was what I
(38:05):
heard people talk about, and it was Yeah.
Speaker 1 (38:09):
It's terrible, So please donate to the ACLU if you can,
or get the help you need from them aclu dot org.
Speaker 2 (38:18):
And watch the Times of Harvey Milk documentary. You will
be so happy you did. There's some amazing real moments
that happened the debate. What I was talking about earlier
is Anne and Harvey being on the live news debate
with two guys who are from like the Christian Coalition,
and they were saying that gay people are pedophiles and
(38:39):
they were like, no, they're not, and they were like,
what's your proof? And she goes she does that rantom
like the FBI yia. She has that accent is like
the best thing you've ever seen.
Speaker 1 (38:50):
Ninety to ninety five men, I might add.
Speaker 2 (38:53):
She's so badass straight men.
Speaker 1 (38:55):
Yeah, yeah, watch that and let's all get inspired. Let's campaign,
let's be activists do this, and also let's stay saxy
and don't get murdered. Goodbye, Elvis, Do you want a cookie?
Speaker 2 (39:18):
This has been an exactly right production.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
Our senior producer is Alejandra Keck.
Speaker 2 (39:22):
Our managing producers Hannah Kyle Crichton.
Speaker 1 (39:25):
Our editor is Aristotle Acevedo.
Speaker 2 (39:27):
This episode was mixed by Leanna scuilach.
Speaker 1 (39:30):
Our researchers are Mareon, mcclashan, and Ali Elkin.
Speaker 2 (39:33):
Email your hometowns to My Favorite Murder at gmail dot com.
Speaker 1 (39:36):
Follow the show on Instagram and Facebook at my Favorite
Murder and Twitter at My favor Murder Boybye
Hosts And Creators
Georgia Hardstark
Karen Kilgariff
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