Archive of Hope

by Milk, Harvey

  68. In Herbert Gold, “A Walk on San Francisco’s Gay Side,” New York Times, November 6, 1977, SM 17.

  69. Bell, California Crucible, 265.

  70. “Elections: San Francisco Squeaker,” Time, December 22, 1975, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,879568,00.html#ixzz1AHre4cvD.

  71. GLBT Studies scholar Wayne Dynes observed, “Later mythology has portrayed Harvey Milk as a radical leftist, but more careful scrutiny shows that he retained elements of his conservative background to the very end. At bottom, he held an almost Jeffersonian concept of the autonomy of small neighborhoods, prospering through small businesses and local attention to community problems. . . . Milk anticipated the later strategy of the ‘rainbow coalition,’ but because of his personal gifts, and the time and place in which he lived, he was able to make it work more effectively for gay and lesbian politics than any other single individual has done before or since.” Quoted in Paul Russell, The Gay 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Gay Men and Lesbians, Past and Present (New York: Kensington Publishing, 1995), 97.

  72. Shilts, “The Life and Death of Harvey Milk,” 31.

  73. “Harvey Milk to Run for Supervisor,” Bay Area Reporter, March 20, 1975, 3.

  74. Quoted in Clendinen and Nagourney, Out for Good, 344; see also Philip Hagar, “Gay Power Emerging at Ballot Box,” Los Angeles Times, September 30, 1975, Al.

  75. Clendinen and Nagourney, Out for Good, 343-345; and Shilts, The Mayor of Castro Street, 105-106.

  76. Clendinen and Nagourney, Out for Good, 343-344; Callis, From Castro Street to City Hall, 79-80; and Shilts, The Mayor of Castro Street, Chapter 7.

  77. Shilts, “The Life and Death of Harvey Milk,” 32.

  78. Harvey Milk, “Milk Forum: Untitled,” Bay Area Reporter, December 11, 1975, 8.

  79. Clendinen and Nagourney, Out for Good, 340.

  80. George Mendehall, “Finding the Answers: Moscone: Milk Appointment Is Just the Beginning,” Bay Area Reporter, February 5, 1976, 7.

  81. Wong, “Harvey,” 6; Shilts, The Mayor of Castro Street, 107, 120-121. It should be noted that pioneer lesbian activist Phyllis Lyon was appointed by Moscone to the Human Rights Commission the same year. Del Martin, “Phyllis Lyon,” in Before Stonewall: Activists for Gay and Lesbian Rights in Historical Context, ed. Vern L. Bullough (Binghamton, NY: Harrington Park Press, 2002): 169-178.

  82. Harvey Milk, “Milk Forum: Musical Chairs,” Bay Area Reporter, January 8, 1976, 4.

  83. Jerry Burns, “Kopp Accuses Phil Burton and McCarthy of ‘Unholy Alliance,’“ San Francisco Chronicle, February 10, 1976, 4.

  84. Callis, From Castro Street to City Hall, Chapter 4, 93, 89; Bruce Brugmann and Jerry Roberts, “Ganging Up on Harvey Milk,” San Francisco Bay Guardian, February 13, 1976; and “Milk Will Run—Loses Permit Board Seat,” San Francisco Chronicle, March 10, 1976, 6.

  85. Harvey Milk, “Declaration of Candidacy,” n.d., Harvey Milk Archives-Scott Smith Collection (GLC35), Box 3, Series 2a, Harvey Milk Candidacy for Assembly 1976, Official Forms; George Mendenhall, “Finding the Answers: Harvey Milk vs. The Machine,” Bay Area Reporter, February 19, 1976; George Mendenhall, “Finding the Answers: Of Harvey’s Running,” Bay Area Reporter, March 18, 1976; and Shilts, The Mayor of Castro Street, Chapter 9.

  86. Milk’s editorial concerned the 1976 Supreme Court affirmation by a 6-3 vote, without oral argument or written opinion, of the lower court ruling upholding the Virginia sodomy statute in Doe v. Commonwealth’s Attorney for the City of Richmond (E.D.Va., 403 F.Supp. 1199, affirmed, --- U.S. ----, 96 S.Ct. 1489, 47 L.Ed.2d 751 [1976]). See Robert D. McFadden, “Homosexuals and A.C.L.U. Dismayed by Court’s Ruling,” New York Times, March 30, 1976, 17. Milk’s animus toward what he called the Nixon Court was well founded. GLBTQ legal scholar William Eskridge observes, “The Burger Court not only denied rights in almost every decided case involving gay litigants or materials but narrowed Warren Court decisions that potentially empowered gay people against homophobes. . . . By treating sex as dirty conduct rather than expression and ‘homosexuals’ as presumptive sodomites rather than citizens, the Burger Court did what it could to preserve the remnants of the closet. Don’t ask, don’t tell sums up the Burger Court philosophy, itself derived from the approach still in rural and small-town America: gay people should be unseen but not heard.” William N. Eskridge, Gaylaw: Challenging the Apartheid of the Closet (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 146.

  87. Harvey Milk, “Milk Forum: A Lesson from the Convention,” Bay Area Reporter, July 22, 1978.

  88. Quoted in Shilts, The Mayor of Castro Street, 138.

  89. Harvey Milk, “Milk Forum: Our Uncle Toms Learn from Nixon,” Bay Area Reporter, May 13, 1976, 17; Bay Area Reporter, May 27, 1976, 19; Wong, “Harvey,” 6-16; Shilts, The Mayor of Castro Street, Chapter 9; Shilts, “The Life and Death of Harvey Milk,” 33-34; Callis, From Castro Street to City Hall, 95-103; and Ron Moscowitz, “Harvey Milk Blames 2 Factors for Defeat,” San Francisco Chronicle, June 10, 1976, 7.

  90. Sandbrook, Mad as Hell, 276.

  91. Mark Vaz, “Zenger’s Interview: Harvey Milk: The Candid Political Activist of San Francisco’s Gay Community Speaks, Zenger’s, November 3, 1976, found in James C. Hormel Gay & Lesbian Center of the San Francisco Public Library, GLC35, Milk-Smith Collection, Box 26, 73-78.

  92. Paul Boyer, “The Evangelical Resurgence in 1970s American Protestantism, in Rigbtward Bound: Making America Conservative in the 1970s, eds. Bruce J. Schulman and Julian E. Zelizer (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), 29. See also Perry Deane Young, God’s Bullies: Native Reflections on Preachers and Politics (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1982).

  93. Sandbrook, Mad as Hell, 267, 348.

  94. Matthew D. Lassiter, “Inventing Family Values,” in Rightward Bound, 14.

  95. Harvey Milk, “Milk Forum: Changes of Influence in ‘77,” Bay Area Reporter, January 6, 1977, 8-9.

  96. Shilts, The Mayor of Castro Street, 155. See also Gold, “A Walk on San Francisco’s Gay Side.”

  97. For details of the Dade County repeal fight and its aftermath in 1977, see Tom Mathews, “Battle over Gay Rights,” Newsweek (June 6, 1977), 16-26; Clendinen and Nagourney, Out for Good, Chapters 22-26, Bryant quoted 292; Young, God’s Bullies, Chapter 3; Cleve Jones, Stitching a Revolution: The Making of an Activist (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 2000), Chapter 5; Eisenbach, Gay Power, Chapter 10; and Fred Fejes, Gay Rights and Moral Panic: The Origins of America’s Debate on Homosexuality (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), Chapters 3-5.

  98. Harvey Milk, “Milk Forum: Where Does the Political Left Stand on Anita Bryant?” Bay Area Reporter, April 14, 1977, 9. See also Harvey Milk, “Milk Forum: Leave Anita Alone?” Bay Area Reporter, March 17, 1977, 4; and Harvey Milk, “Milk Forum: Pools within Pools,” Bay Area Reporter, March 31, 1977, 8. Cuban gay activist Ovidio “Herb” Ramos was a spokesperson for the Latin Committee for the Human Rights of Gays, working in Miami, where Bryant’s hate speech in the Catholic Cuban community had been fanned by Catholic and Protestant leaders. He participated in a debate on March 14 with representatives of Save Our Children on a Spanish-language radio station. The vitriol of the comments spewed by those listeners who called in—advocating deportation, concentration camps, and execution—was so devastating that two days later Ramos committed suicide. Fejes, Gay Rights and Moral Panic, 128-129; and Young, God’s Bullies, 53-54.

  99. Harvey Milk, “Milk Forum: Porno Bill to Close Polk/Castro Bookstores and Flicks?” Bay Area Reporter, January 20, 1977, 4; Harvey Milk, “Milk Forum: The Damage Has Been Done—Again,” Bay Area Reporter, February 3, 1977, 10; Milk, “Leave Anita Alone?”; and Harvey Milk, “Milk Forum: Finding a Home for Porno Houses,” Bay Area Reporter, June 9, 1977, 10.

  100. Clendinen and Nagourney, Out for Good, 336-337.

  101. Grant Winthrop, “Florida Vote Upsets San Francisco Homosexuals,” Boston Globe, Tune 20, 1977.

  102. See Tina Fetner, “Working
Anita Bryant: The Impact of Christian Anti-Gay Activism on Lesbian and Gay Movement Claims,” Social Problems 48 (August 2001): 411-428.

  103. Shilts, The Mayor of Castro Street, 164. In a January 1979 editorial, Eric Rofes drew explicit linkages among Bryant’s crusade, Hillsborough’s murder, and Dan White’s assassination of Harvey Milk within a broader context of escalating homophobic attacks. “To deny there is a connection [among these events] . . . is to deny there is a connection between the rational hatred of homosexuality and the irrational violence directed against gay people.” Eric Rofes, “Milk Death, Homophobia Link Hard to Deny,” Boston Globe, January 8, 1979, 11.

  104. See Fejes, Gay Rights and Moral Panic, Chapters 6 and 7.

  105. Shilts, The Mayor of Castro Street, 160.

  106. Harvey Milk, “Milk Forum: 40,000 Throng Castro St. Fair,” Bay Area Reporter, August 18, 1977, 11; and Harvey Milk, “Milk Forum: A Lifestyle Emerges,” Bay Area Reporter, September 1, 1977, 11.

  107. For analysis of the Hope Speech, and Milk’s discourse generally, see Karen A. Foss, “Harvey Milk: ‘You Have to Give Them Hope,’“ Journal of the West 27 (April 1988): 75-81; Karen A. Foss, “The Logic of Folly in the Political Campaigns of Harvey Milk,” in Queer Words/Queer Images: Communication and the Construction of Homosexuality, ed. R. Jeffrey Ringer (New York: NYU Press, 1994): 7-29; Karen A. Foss, “Harvey Milk and the Queer Rhetorical Situation,” in Queering Public Address: Sexualities and American Historical Discourse, ed. Charles E. Morris III (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2007): 74-92; and Jason Edward Black & Charles E. Morris III, “Harvey Milk, ‘You’ve Got to Have Hope’ (24 June 1977),” Voices of Democracy journal (National Endowment for the Humanities) 6 (2011): 63-82.

  108. Harvey Milk, “Milk Forum: You Draw the Conclusion,” Bay Area Reporter, August 4, 1977, 8.

  109. For discussion of the 1977 campaign, see George Mendenhall, “Finding the Answers: Milk vs. Stokes in the Castro,” Bay Area Reporter, December 9, 1976, 13-14; Harvey Milk, “Milk Forum: Haight Street: A New Direction or Back Behind the Iron Gates?” Bay Area Reporter, October 13, 1977, 14; Wayne Friday, “Milk for Supervisor District 5, Bay Area Reporter, October 27, 1977, 16-17; Harvey Milk, “Milk Forum: Running against a Moralist,” Bay Area Reporter, October 27, 1977, 20; Shilts, The Mayor of Castro Street, Chapter 11; Callis, From Castro Street to City Hall, Chapter 5; Clendinen and Nagourney, Out for Good, Chapter 24; Anne Kronenberg, “Everybody Needed Milk,” in Out in the Castro: Desire, Promise, Activism, ed. Winston Leyland (San Francisco: Leyland Publications, 2002): 37-43; Shilts, “The Life and Death of Harvey Milk,” 36-39; Wong, “Harvey,” 19-25; Bill Sievert, “Divided They Stand—The Milk-Stokes Split,” The Advocate, July 13, 1977, 13; and Jerry Burns, “17 Wage Wide-Open Battle for District 5 Supervisor,” San Francisco Chronicle, November 4, 1977, 4.

  110. Harry Britt, “Harvey Milk as I Knew Him,” 80.

  111. Quoted in Shilts, The Mayor of Castro Street, 183.

  112. Harvey Milk, “Milk Forum: Victory Statement,” Bay Area Reporter, November 10, 1977, 77.

  113. Quoted in Shilts, The Mayor of Castro Street, 190. For discussion of Milk’s inauguration and opening acts and speeches as supervisor, see Shilts, The Mayor of Castro Street, Chapter 12; and Randy Alfred, “Milk Sworn In: SF Gay Goes to City Hall,” GAYVOTE (San Francisco Gay Democratic Club newsletter) 1 (January 1978): 1, 4, found in James C. Hormel Gay & Lesbian Center of the San Francisco Public Library, GLC35, Milk-Smith Collection, Box 4, Series 2a. G.

  114. In his “Milk Forum,” he declared, “The coalition of minorities—including the feminist and Gay movements—are starting to join on all issues that affect anyone in the coalition.” Harvey Milk, “Milk Forum: The Jarvis-Gann Initiative,” Bay Area Reporter, March 30, 1978, 14.

  115. Kronenberg, “Everybody Needed Milk,” 41. For an account of Milk’s work in City Hall during 1978, see Emery, “Appendix: Milk’s Supervisorial Activities,” The Harvey Milk Interviews, 317-339; Bruce Pettit, “Anne Kronenberg & Dick Pabich: Harvey Milk’s Dynamic Aides Speak Out,” Bay Area Reporter, March 2, 1978, 8-9; and Bruce Pettit, “Milk’s Last Three Months,” Bay Area Reporter, July 20, 1978, 7.

  116. See Shilts, The Mayor of Castro Street, Chapter 12.

  117. Pettit, “Anne Kronenberg and Dick Pabich”; and John Geluardi, “Dan White’s Motive More about Betrayal than Homophobia,” San Francisco Weekly (January 30, 2008), http://www.sfweekly.com/2008-01-30/news/white-in-milk. See also Mike Weiss, Double Play: The Hidden Passions Behind the Double Assassination of George Moscone and Harvey Milk (1984; San Francisco: Vince Emery Productions, 2010).

  118. Shilts, The Mayor of Castro Street, 193.

  119. Wong, “Harvey,” 29, 30.

  120. Briggs’ campaign against gay teachers was particularly appalling because ideology, such as Bryant’s evangelicalism, did not motivate him. Reporter Robert Shrum wrote, “Briggs recalled that, ‘Reagan was going down the tubes in 1976 until he came up with Panama as an issue.’ So Briggs came up with his own issue, ‘the homosexual issue,’ rating it ‘the hottest social issue since Reconstruction.’“ Although Briggs claimed “it was when he flew to Miami to volunteer for Bryant’s crusade that the Lord inspired him with the Briggs Initiative,” his inspiration, as Shilts argued, likely came rather from his will to power: “it seemed highly doubtful from the start that John Briggs ever really had anything personal against gays. He was just running for governor. ‘It’s just politics . . . just politics.’“ After the gubernatorial prospects faded, Briggs pressed on with Prop 6 because it likely represented his last best hope for the political limelight. Shrum, “Gay-Baiting in California: Sexual Politics in the Classroom,” New Times, September 4, 1978, 23-24; and Shilts, The Mayor of Castro Street, 157-58, 241.

  121. Quoted in Clendinen and Nagourney, Out for Good, 381.

  122. Shilts, The Mayor of Castro Street, 239.

  123. Quoted in Shrum, “Gay-Baiting in the Classroom,” 22.

  124. Shilts, The Mayor of Castro Street, 242.

  125. For a discussion of Holocaust rhetoric in the history of the struggle for gay rights, see Arlene Stein, “Whose Memories? Whose Victimhood? Contests for the Holocaust Frame in Recent Social Movement Discourse,” Sociological Perspectives 41 (1998): 519-540. Throughout his career, Milk used Hitler, the Nazis, and Jewish traitors as analogies and rhetorical frames in denouncing his political enemies. In addition to Document 10 on police brutality, note these examples: “As [Anita Bryant] gains support (and she is) she takes stronger and stronger anti-gay stands. Reminds me of how Hitler rose to power by using the Jews as bait. I don’t see Bryant becoming another Hitler, but the tactic is similar. Hitler even had many Jews on his side at first, defending his ‘rights’“; “Letting [Anita Bryant] get away with her bigotry and hatred is not too far from letting the Nixons and the Hitlers get away with their sicknesses”; “Hitler lives on in Briggs.” Milk, “Leave Anita Alone?”; Milk, “Pools within Pools”; and Harvey Milk, “Milk Forum: Jarvis-Gann,” Bay Area Reporter, June 22, 1978, 12.

  126. Shilts, The Mayor of Castro Street, 229. For description of a typical debate, see for example Jean Dickinson, “Briggs-Milk Debate: Scoring Points in WC [Walnut Creek],” Contra Costa Times, September 17, 1978, 1, found in James C. Hormel Gay & Lesbian Center of the San Francisco Public Library, GLC35, Milk-Smith Collection, Box 26, 73-78 Clippings. For discussion of the October 11, 1978, televised debate hosted by KQED in San Francisco, in which Milk was partnered with San Francisco State University Speech Professor and lesbian-feminist activist Sally Miller Gearhart, see Raul Ramirez, “Verbal, Physical Scuffling Mark Debate on Prop. 6,” San Francisco Examiner, October 12, 1978, 10; and Jones, Stitching a Revolution, 49-51.

  127. Clendinen and Nagourney, Out for Good, 381-390; and Shrum, “Gay-Baiting in the Classroom,” 24-27.

  128. Quoted in Shilts, The Mayor of Castro Street, 250.

  129. Warren Hinckle, “Dan White’s Final Solution,” Inquiry Magazine
, October 29, 1979: 8-20; See Shilts, The Mayor of Castro Street, Chapters 15-18; Weiss, Double Play; The Times of Harvey Milk, dir. Rob Epstein (New York: New York Films, 1984); Warren Hinckle, Gayslayer! The Story of How Dan White Killed Harvey Milk and George Moscone and Got Away with Murder (San Francisco: Silver Dollar Books, 1985); Stryker and Van Buskirk, Gay by the Bay; Jones, Stitching a Revolution; Leyland, Out in the Castro; de Jim, San Francisco’s Castro; William Lipsky, Gay and Lesbian San Francisco (San Francisco: Arcadia Publishing, 2006); and Milk: A Pictorial History of Harvey Milk (New York: Newmarket Press, 2009).

  130. As a friendly amendment to Castiglia and Reed’s insightful reading of the “metamemory” in Milk, by which they mean intertextual layers of the past operative in the film, including Epstein’s The Times of Harvey Milk, we would emphasize that the invaluable countermemory initiatives they prescribe entail multiple and complex rhetorical challenges, including the inventional work of creating inducements to memory in the first place (gay film qua gay film cannot be presumed sufficient, however sexy the trailer) and providing the requisite contextual scaffolding (too often disparagingly understood as “history lessons”) that would enable cross-generational engagement through memory literacies. We are not convinced, for instance, that the intertextual materials Castiglia and Reed rightly identify would be legible as such for many audience members. We continue to puzzle over the vexing question of how scholar activists, what we term archival queers, without seeming patronizing or pedantic while being collaborative, would enhance interest in a memory text and offer enough backstory or “annotation” to make the text meaningful beyond basic narrative conventions or facile hero/martyr tales—not that Milk is guilty of either. Christopher Castiglia and Christopher Reed, If Memory Serves: Gay Men, AIDS, and the Promise of the Queer Past (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012), Introduction and Chapter 1, 66-69. See also Charles E. Morris III, “Archival Queer,” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 9.1 (2006): 145-151; and K. J. Rawson and Charles E. Morris III, “Queer Archives/Archival Queers,” in Re/Theorizing Writing Histories of Rhetoric, ed. Michelle Baliff (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, forthcoming 2013).