Harvey Milk

Harvey Milk

Born: May 22, 1930
Died: November 27, 1978
in Woodmere, Long Island, New York, USA
Harvey Bernard Milk (May 22, 1930 – November 27, 1978) was an American politician and the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California, as a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Milk was born and raised in New York where he acknowledged his homosexuality as an adolescent, but chose to pursue sexual relationships with secrecy and discretion well into his adult years. His experience in the counterculture of the 1960s caused him to shed many of his conservative views about individual freedom and the expression of sexuality.

Milk moved to San Francisco in 1972 and opened a camera store. Although he had been restless, holding an assortment of jobs and moving house frequently, he settled in The Castro, a neighborhood that was experiencing a mass immigration of gay men and lesbians. He was compelled to run for city supervisor in 1973, though he encountered resistance from the existing gay political establishment. His campaign was compared to theater; he was brash, outspoken, animated, and outrageous, earning media attention and votes, although not enough to be elected. He campaigned again in the next two supervisor elections, dubbing himself the "Mayor of Castro Street". Voters responded enough to warrant his running for the California State Assembly as well. Taking advantage of his growing popularity, he led the gay political movement in fierce battles against anti-gay initiatives. Milk was elected city supervisor in 1977 after San Francisco reorganized its election procedures to choose representatives from neighborhoods rather than through city-wide ballots.

Milk served almost eleven months in office, during which he sponsored a bill banning discrimination in public accommodations, housing, and employment on the basis of sexual orientation. The Supervisors passed the bill by a vote of 11–1, and it was signed into law by Mayor George Moscone. On November 27, 1978, Milk and Moscone were assassinated by Dan White, a disgruntled former city supervisor.

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

Description above from the Wikipedia article Harvey Milk, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.

Movies for Harvey Milk...

Pat Rocco Dared
Title: Pat Rocco Dared
Character: Self (archive footage)
Released: December 2, 2021
Type: Movie
This entertaining and enlightening documentary sheds a light on a pioneering moment in film history and the gay rights movement, as it revisits the break-through 1960s gay films of Pat Rocco. Rocco was responsible for the very first gay films that were shown openly to the paying public in the late 1960s. Situated before hardcore porn became the norm, and in marked contrast to the somewhat darker gay porn that was coming out of New York at the time. Pat Rocco’s film were more sun-dappled, featuring tanned and happy-looking naked men on sail boats and on beaches, celebrating their identities and the beauty of the male body. The filmmakers got to talk to the generous, rather humble and open-minded Rocco just before his death. It took a team of dedicated Canadian filmmakers to capture a fairly obscure moment of indie film history that deserves to be remembered.
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Ask Any Buddy
Title: Ask Any Buddy
Character: (archive footage)
Released: July 20, 2019
Type: Movie
A kaleidoscopic snapshot of urban gay life during the gay liberation era — or at least how it looked in the movies.
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Reel in the Closet
Title: Reel in the Closet
Released: June 21, 2015
Type: Movie
Never before seen home movies made by queer people dating back to the 1930s and the struggle to save them before they are lost forever.
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575 Castro St.
Title: 575 Castro St.
Character: Self (voice) (archive footage)
Released: February 11, 2009
Type: Movie
Images set to a tape recording that slain San Francisco City Supervisor Harvey Milk made in November 1977 to be played in case he was killed.
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Milk
Title: Milk
Character: Self (archive Footage)
Released: November 5, 2008
Type: Movie
The true story of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man ever elected to public office. In San Francisco in the late 1970s, Harvey Milk becomes an activist for gay rights and inspires others to join him in his fight for equal rights that should be available to all Americans.
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The Times of Harvey Milk
Title: The Times of Harvey Milk
Character: Himself (archive footage)
Released: October 7, 1984
Type: Movie
Harvey Milk was an outspoken human rights activist and one of the first openly gay U.S. politicians elected to public office; even after his assassination in 1978, he continues to inspire disenfranchised people around the world.
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Gay Power
Title: Gay Power
Character: Self
Released: November 24, 1979
Type: Movie
KPIX's Emmy Award winning People's 5 report with Don Knapp from November 24th 1979, on the lifestyle and and political ambitions of the gay community in San Francisco.
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Homosexuelle in New York
Title: Homosexuelle in New York
Character: Self (uncredited)
Released: January 1, 1971
Type: Movie