The Assassination of Harvey Milk

On This Day in History: November 27, 1978

The common belief regarding the assassination of San Francisco politician Harvey Milk is that he died because he was gay. That may have played a role, but it was more about political grievances the murderer had. The media said the shooter blamed his desire to kill on eating Twinkies.

--On This Day in History Shit Went Down: November 27, 1978--

Milk was the first openly gay elected official in California’s history, serving on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors beginning in early 1978. He’d be dead less than a year later, but not before becoming a popular icon in the city’s gay community. In his short tenure as a city official, Milk sponsored a law banning discrimination based on sexual orientation for housing, employment, or use of public accommodations. It passed 11–1, with the one dissenting vote being Dan White’s, the man who murdered him.

White was a Vietnam veteran, and a former police officer and firefighter. He won as a Democrat to become a city supervisor the same time as Milk, who was a U.S. Navy diving officer during the Korean War. The pair initially worked well together, despite White representing a conservative neighborhood and seeing himself as a defender of “family and religious life against homosexuals.” White was a contradiction, because his vote helped defeat the anti-gay Briggs Initiative that sought to ban gay people from working as teachers. He also invited Milk to attend his child’s baptism.

The antagonism began when Milk voted in favor of a group home for youth offenders in White’s district, which White strongly opposed. It’s possible White’s subsequent dissent against Milk’s gay rights ordinance was revenge for this. Pissed off that he couldn’t get his way, White resigned his seat on November 10. Rather than hold an election, Mayor George Moscone appointed a liberal replacement for the seat. People in White’s former district were pissed and told White to rescind his resignation, which he did, but the mayor said “no backsies.” One of the people who lobbied the mayor not to take White back was Harvey Milk.

On November 27, 1978, Dan White showed up at City Hall carrying his old service revolver, entering via a first-floor window to avoid the metal detectors. He confronted Mayor Moscone in his office, asking again to be reinstated. When Moscone refused, White emptied his gun into the mayor, killing him. He reloaded, then went in search of Milk, found him, and killed him too.

White was later captured and tried for murder, but his defense team claimed diminished capacity due to depression. The defense presented a change in diet as evidence of said depression, which the media then misrepresented as a high-sugar diet being his excuse for the murders. They called it the “Twinkie defense.” It worked, and White was convicted only of voluntary manslaughter and given a light sentence. The city was enraged, and the White Night Riots followed.

White served only five years, then took his own life less than two years after his release from prison.

Those who cannot remember the past need a history teacher who says “fuck” a lot. Get both volumes of On This Day in History Sh!t Went Down. The holidays are coming and they make great gifts.