At the same time, singer and anti-gay rights activist Anita Bryant was pushing her “Save Our Children” campaign, aiming to make it legal to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation.<\/p>\n
In San Francisco, a gay man had been attacked on the street and stabbed to death \u2014 the community blamed simmering homophobia.<\/p>\n
Milk, with a new high profile, was bracing himself for the worst.<\/p>\n
“This is to be played only in the event of my death by assassination,” he said.<\/p>\n
“If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door.”<\/p>\n
One year and nine days later \u2014 on November 27, 1978 \u2014 he would be dead.<\/p>\n
A champion of the gay community meets his future killer<\/p>\n
Milk was not just the first openly gay public official in California \u2014 he was one of the first in the United States.<\/p>\n
He had made a name for himself as a representative of San Francisco’s LGBTQ+ community, also championing low-cost housing, marginalised communities and environmental issues.<\/p>\n
During his brief time as a city supervisor, he helped prohibit anti-gay discrimination in employment and housing.<\/p>\n
Also on the Board of Supervisors was Dan White \u2014 who later resigned after clashing with Milk and other members repeatedly.<\/p>\n
When his business failed, White reversed his resignation, a move which was ultimately rejected by the city’s mayor, George Moscone.<\/p>\n
In just minutes, an assassination at city hall unfolds<\/p>\n
On that day in late November 1978, White got a lift to city hall from his assistant, telling her he wanted to meet with Moscone and Milk.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Harvey Milk filling in for the city’s mayor, George Moscone. for a day in 1978. (Wikimedia Commons: Daniel Nicoletta)<\/p>\n
About 10:25am, he climbed through a basement window of the building \u2014 bypassing the metal detectors and security at the front entrance.<\/p>\n
Moving quickly upstairs, he asked to see the mayor alone.<\/p>\n
Down the hall, then-president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors Dianne Feinstein called out to him as he passed her office door.<\/p>\n
“[He] said something to the effect [of] ‘just a moment’, or, ‘I have something to do first’, and went by very rapidly,” Feinstein testified later.<\/p>\n
“And I heard the door close, and I heard the unmistakeable shots.”<\/p>\n
Inside the mayor’s office, White had pulled a revolver and shot Moscone four times, twice in the shoulder and chest and twice in the head.<\/p>\n
Then he reloaded the weapon and dashed for the door, running towards the other side of the building, intercepted for a brief moment by Feinstein.<\/p>\n
“I have something to do first,” he told her again.<\/p>\n
Catching up with Milk, he asked to speak in White’s old office.<\/p>\n
When Milk obliged, White closed the door and blocked it with his body before shooting Milk five times.<\/p>\n
Feinstein had smelled the gunpowder.<\/p>\n
“I went down the hall [and] found Harvey on his stomach,” she said in a later interview.<\/p>\n
“I tried to get a pulse and put my finger through a bullet hole.”<\/p>\n
By 10:55am, Milk was dead at 48 years old.<\/p>\n
The White Night Riot and a seven-year sentence<\/p>\n
That same night, a crowd of thousands marched silently through the streets of San Francisco to city hall in Milk’s memory.<\/p>\n
White had left city hall without incident and later handed himself in to San Francisco police, where he confessed to both killings.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Dianne Feinstein led an estimated 15,000 marchers in memory of slain George Moscone and Harvey Milk in 1979. (AP Photo: Paul Sakuma\u00a0)<\/p>\n
He would later be acquitted of murder and instead sentenced to seven years for the lesser crime of voluntary manslaughter.<\/p>\n
The verdict sparked fury among the city’s queer community.<\/p>\n
What began as a peaceful march following the trial descended into what would become known as the White Night Riot, a violent clash between San Francisco police and the gay community.<\/p>\n
Dozens of police officers and members of the public were hospitalised and dozens more were arrested.<\/p>\n
White was later released on parole after just over five years behind bars.<\/p>\n
In 1985, he took his own life.<\/p>\n
Harvey Milk’s legacy of ‘hope’, 50 years after his death<\/p>\n
More than 50 years after the assassination of Milk, the state of California leads the US for the number of openly LGBTQ+ elected officials \u2014 with 203 in total elected as of November 2025.<\/p>\n
As of 2025, 49 out of 50 US states have at least one out LGBTQ+ official in office, according to research organisation the LGBTQ+ Victory Institute.<\/p>\n
Milk’s life has since been the subject of books, an opera and films.<\/p>\n
Multiple public schools, community centres, plazas, public libraries and more have been named in his honour.<\/p>\n
In 2009 his nephew, Stuart Milk, accepted a posthumous Medal of Freedom from president Barack Obama in his uncle’s honour.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Annual memorial services are held in memory of Harvey Milk and George Moscone.\u00a0 (Reuters: Stephen Lam)<\/p>\n
In those recordings made before his death, Milk said he considered himself “part of a movement”.<\/p>\n
“I ask for the [gay rights] movement to continue, for the movement to grow,” he said.<\/p>\n
“It’s not about personal gain, not about ego, not about power.<\/p>\n
“It’s about giving those young people out there \u2026 hope. You gotta give them hope.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One year before a gunman shot him dead at city hall, California’s first openly gay public official sat…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":71290,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[41917,7,9,8,41916,23962,41918,20393,20987,101,41919],"class_list":{"0":"post-71289","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-california","8":"tag-assassination","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-california-headlines","11":"tag-california-news","12":"tag-dan-white","13":"tag-dianne-feinstein","14":"tag-george-moscone","15":"tag-harvey-milk","16":"tag-lgbt","17":"tag-san-francisco","18":"tag-white-night-riot"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71289"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71289\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}