October 21, 1985: Dan White, the man who murdered both Harvey Milk and San Francisco Mayor George Moscone, commits suicide.
Harvey Milk was the first openly gay individual to be elected to office in California. White a fellow San Francisco supervisor assassinated San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Milk, on Monday, November 27, 1978, at San Francisco’s City Hall. In a controversial verdict that led to the coining of the legal slang the”Twinkie Defense,” White was convicted of manslaughter rather than murder. White served five years of an only seven-year prison sentence.
White’s release was carried out with great secrecy. The afternoon before his scheduled release, he was transferred 200 miles south to a facility in the Tehachapi mountains north of Los Angeles. The next morning, he was handed over to the Los Angeles Parole Department which had arranged for an apartment for him somewhere in LA. He was given $200 in cash, the standard amount given to released prisoners. The press was given no information other than that White had been secretly released and his parole was not to exceed one year. White remained in hiding for a period of nine months During that period, he contacted his old friend, San Francisco Detective Frank Falzon, whom he had not talked to since the trial. White invited Falzon to join him in L.A., saying that he wanted to explain the whole thing.
Falzon claimed that at that meeting, White confessed that not only was his killing of Moscone and Milk premeditated, but that he had actually planned to kill Carol Silver and Willie Brown as well. Falzon quoted White as having said, “I was on a mission. I wanted the four of them. Carol Ruth Silver, she was the biggest snake … and Willie Brown, he was masterminding the whole thing. (Meaning his not being to withdraw his resignation from the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.)
Less than two years after his release, Dan White returned to San Francisco, methodically taped a garden hose to the tailpipe of his car , stuck the other end through a car window, turned on the ignition and died. In his hands, he clutched photographs of his three children and his wife.
Dan White did not kill himself out of guilt. He did it because his killing Harvey Milk was going to follow him for the rest of his entire life.
Scott Smith, Milk’s lover and business partner, said he was “stunned” by White’s death but not upset. “He got away with murder,” Smith said. “I suppose what goes around comes around.”
Many referto Dan White even today as ” The most hated man in San Francisco’s history.”
And rightfully so.
Please take a few minutes to read Dan White’s confession to the murder of Mayor George Moscone and Harvey Milk. Also watch the video below: Dan White News Footage Of Arrest, Trial & The White Night Riots.
As many of you know a lot of my history posts tend to lean more towards New York City’s gay history mostly because that is where I hail from. With that being said I would like to share with you a very interesting and great documentary I stumbled upon about the history of the Castro neighborhood in San Francisco.
Originally shown during the Gay and Lesbian Pride Month in 1996, The Castro is a 90-minute documentary tells the dramatic story of how a quiet corner of San Francisco became the cornerstone of a movement-an international symbol of gay liberation.
Using rare archival film and fresh contemporary footage, the story of the Castro’s transformation and history is told by the people who lived it: young and old, straight and gay. They bring to life a history ranging from the discriminatory world of the 1950s, through the flowering of “gay power,” and into the age of AIDS.
The Castro, was produced by KQED San Francisco/PBS and won the George Foster Peabody Award, a CINE Golden Eagle Award and was screened at numerous film festivals in the United States and abroad.
Its a must see to understand our past and why the community is so different today..
April 25, 1284 – Edward II, who ruled from 1307-1327, is one of England’s less fondly remembered kings. His reign consisted of feuds with his barons, a failed invasion of Scotland in 1314, a famine, more feuding with his barons, the murders of his two male lovers and an invasion by a political rival that led to him being replaced rather gruesomely by his son, Edward III.
King Edward II is born in Caernavon Wales. Ancient Christianity had tolerated homosexuality (In the 12th century the king of France elevated his lover to high office) but by the mid 13th century life was harder on gays and Edward was made an example. His first lover Piers Gaveston ended in Gaveston’s murder by courtiers. After his death, Edward “constantly had prayers said for [Gaveston’s] soul; and spent a lot of money on Gaveston’s tomb
His second affair, with Hugh le Despenser, ended with the Barons arresting and imprisoning them both. Le Despenser had his genitals cut off and burned in front of him and was then beheaded. Edward as forced to abdicate the throne and pass it on to his son, Edward, who was crowned Edward III in February 1327. The deposed king was murdered in September of that year by having a red-hot poker inserted in his anus.
April 25th, 1978 – St. Paul, Minnesota votes to repeal its four-year old gay-rights ordinance by a margin of 2-1. Mary Richards was not happy.
April 25th, 1979 – Jury selection begins in the trial of Dan White for the murder of S.F. Mayor George Moscone and gay activist Supervisor Harvey Milk. In a controversial verdict that led to the coining of the legal slang “Twinkie defense,” White was convicted of manslaughter rather than murder in the deaths of Milk and Moscone. White served five years of a seven-year prison sentence. Less than two years after his release, he returned to San Francisco and committed suicide. San Francisco Weekly has referred to White as “perhaps the most hated man in San Francisco’s history.”
April 25th, 1993 – The third March on Washington happened and has an estimated attendance one million people. Although gays in the military was the major issue of that march it also marked the first time that same-sex marriage gained some notice, as well. On the day before the march, the Rev. Troy Perry, founder of the Metropolitan Community Church, married 2,000 gay couples in a ceremony on the steps of the Internal Revenue Service building. Although the event was largely obscured by the march itself, for those who participated it was a transforming occasion.
“I remember going down to escalators to catch the Metro to the IRS,” recalls Aleta Fenceroy of Omaha, who married her partner Jean Mayberry at that ceremony, “and the whole subway tunnel burst out with people singing ‘Going to the Chapel.’ It was one of those moments that still gives me goose bumps when I think of it.” Later that day, she and Mayberry walked around Dupont Circle with wreaths of flowers in their hair, receiving the congratulations of strangers.
April 25th, 1995 – Lawrence, Kansas passes an ordinance prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation. The law, the culmination of a 7-year struggle, is the only one of its type in the state of Kansas.
Tucker Carlson blasted The Washington Post and its media columnist, Erik Wemple, on Tuesday for looking into his background and contacting Carlson’s college acquaintances.
“Jeff Bezos had one of his minions, a mentally unbalanced middle-aged man called Erik Wemple, pull our dusty college yearbook and call around and see if we’d done anything naughty at the age of 19,” Carlson told viewers, referring to the Amazon CEO, who also owns the Post. “Let us know if you hear any good stories.”
According to Carlson, “quite a few old college classmates” had contacted him Tuesday and told him Wemple had been asking questions.
Also listed as an affiliation on Carlson’s yearbook page is the Christian Fellowship and the Jesse Helms Foundation (Helms was a long-serving North Carolina senator with outspoken anti-gay beliefs.)
White and Helms is not the inspiring figure you would typically find mentioned in a college yearbook. Unless that is you are a student at Adolph Hitler U.
Perhaps this is the story that @TuckerCarlson was trying to get ahead of. In his college yearbook, he listed himself as a member of the "Dan White Society."
Watch the Emmy Award winning KPIX People’s 5 report with Don Knapp presented on the 1 year Anniversary of slain Mayor Moscone & Supervisor Harvey Milk’s murders.
The 25 minute special report opens joyously with the Village People song about San Francisco, with street scenes in SF’s Castro neighborhood but interviews are spliced in of people on the street obviously uncomfortable with the growing homosexual community. The camera pans out to a giant gay bathouse billboard for 330 Ritch and an interview soon follows with Cleve Jones.
The young activist discusses how to many citizens, the signs of simple gay affection like handholding are considered flaunting & “throwing it in people’s faces”. He sees the idea that homosexuals will take over local politics as “ridiculous” and the threat of a growing potential influence of the gay community “nonsense”. People’s opinions on the flamboyant out gay lifestyle and and growing political ambitions of the gay community in San Francisco are discussed.
Footage from a spirited 1978 debate between Harvey Milk and conservative John Briggs, moderated by Richard Hart, shows Milk calling the bigoted Briggs a liar, and the men clashing over issues relating to Proposition 6 and the rights of gays and lesbians to teach in California classrooms.
Several lesbians (including Ann Kronenberg) describe the challenges they face being accepted in society and also explain how their priorities and life experiences diverge from those of gay men.
San Francisco’s late mayor George Moscone is seen briefly playing basketball in 1978 and discussing what he considers to be appropriate behavior for politicians.
The program ends with views of a candlelight march from the Castro to San Francisco City Hall on November 27th 1979 to remember Milk and Moscone, on the first anniversary of their murders.”
On November 27, 2018 at 7 pm slain gay civil-rights rights icon Harvey Milk will be remembered with a candlelight walk from the plaza named for Milk to City Hall, where he was assassinated by SF Supervisor Dan White 40 years ago.
The candlelight walk is being organized by the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club and will echo the spontaneous march of thousands that took place in the city after the murders,
“In November of 1978, bookending the Thanksgiving holiday, the city of San Francisco and, it might be said, the world was changed forever. The double horror of the tragedy at Jonestown, followed by the slaying of Harvey Milk and George Moscone was a crushing trauma to the heart and soul of San Francisco, and yet in that darkness we rose together in candlelight not only to remember those we had lost but to strengthen and galvanize ourselves to give them voice to continue their fight and and vision for the future….In honor of that same eloquent response, the Harvey Milk LGBTQ Democratic Club invites all to join us in quiet reflection from those who knew these great advocates of social justice at Harvey Milk Plaza. Following this, we will walk in candlelight to the steps of City Hall where current community leadership will echo their vision, just as those who were there did that warm November night in 1978.”
Back2Stonewall hopes that all who can attend will and remember Harvey Bernard Milk one of the greatest gay activist and legend of our times.
April 21 1981 – In Toronto six people, including activists George Hislop and Peter Maloney and head of Club Bath chain in United States, Jack Campbell are charged with conspiracy to live off avails of crime. All three were listed as owners of the Club Baths Toronto. These were the final charges following the infamous February 5, 1981 bathhouse raids named laughingly by Metropolitan Toronto Police as Operation Soap place on February 5, 1981 where over 300 gay bathhouse patrons were arrested.
The event marked a major turning point in the history of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community in Canada; the raids and their aftermath are today widely considered to be the Canadian equivalent of the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York City Mass protests and rallies were held denouncing the incident. These evolved into Toronto’s current Pride Week, which is now one of the world’s largest gay pride festivals 2010.
Almost all the charges against the 300+ men charges including Hislop, Maloney and Campbel are later dropped in court and the Toronto Metro Police become a laughingstock.
April 22
April 22, 1766 – Madame De Stael is born near Paris. Older editions of the Encyclopedia Britannica only describe her life as being “unconventional”. In truth, she was an active bisexual. Born Anne Louise Germaine Necker she seduced and lived for 19 years with Juliette Recamier the most celebrated beauty of her time. Upon Recamier’s death, De Stael wrote “I love you with a love that surpasses that of friendship…were I to embrace you with all that remains of me.”
Celebrated for her conversational eloquence, she participated actively in the political and intellectual life of her times. Her works, both critical and fictional, made their mark on the history of European Romanticism.
April 22, 2012 – Jack Denton Reese, a gay Mormon teen commits suicide in Mountain Green, Utah. He was 17 years old. According to Jack’s boyfriend, Alex Smith, Jack was bullied at school. On April 23, Alex, who didn’t know yet that his boyfriend had taken his life, spoke at a panel about the bullying Jack experienced. The panel was held in connection with the screening of the documentary film, “Bullied.”
April 23
April 23, 1791 – James Buchanan is born near Mercerburg, Pennsylvania. The 15th president of the United States was the only bachelor to serve in that office. His closest friend, Senator William Rufus De Vane King was called “Miss Nancy” by his detractors, making the President “Mr Nancy.”
April 23rd, 1990 – The Hate Crimes Statistic Act is signed into law by President George H.W. Bush. It is the first U.S. bill to use the phrase “sexual orientation.”
“We must work together to build an America of opportunity, where every American is free finally from discrimination. And I will use this noble office, this bully pulpit, if you will, to speak out against hate and discrimination everywhere it exists.”
Eight years later his sons Presidential administration will become one of the most anti-gay in United States recorded history.
April 24
April 24, 1858 – Dame Ethel Smyth is born in Surrey, England. A composer, writer, and feminist Smyth wrote seven torrid volumes of explicit memoirs. Smyth was something of a female Don Juan. She particularly enjoyed seducing the wives of men who had wanted to sleep with her.
Smyth was affectionately caricatured in E.F. Benson”s Dodo novels and mocked by Virginia Woolf. In 1910, Smyth met Emmaline Pankhurst, the founder of the British women’s suffrage movement and head of the militant and extremely well-organized Women’s Social and Political Union. Struck by Mrs. Pankhurst’s mesmerizing public speeches, Smyth pledged to give up music for two years and devote herself to the cause of votes for women.
In London in 1912: over 100 arrested suffragists, including Ethel Smyth, who had smashed windows of suffrage opponents’ homes in well-coordinated simultaneous incidents all over London, were arrested, tried, and sentenced to two months’ imprisonment. Ethel Smyth found her time in Halloway Prison an “exalting” experience of communal determination and sacrifice by women of all ages and classes. One day, while the prisoners were taking their outdoor
exercise, Ethel Smyth appeared at a window overlooking the prison yard, and conducted their singing of the suffrage battle anthem by waving her toothbrush.
April 25
April 25, 1284 – King Edward II is born in Caernavon Wales. Ancient Christianity had tolerated homosexuality (In the 12th century the king of France elevated his lover to high office) but by the mid 13th century live was harder on gays and Edward was made an example. His first lover Piers Gaveston ended in Gaveston’s murder by courtiers. His second affair, with Hugh le Despenser, ended with the Barons arresting them, imprisoning and them. Le Despenser had his genitals cut off and burned in front of him. He was then beheaded. Edward was murdered by having a red-hot poker inserted in his anus.
April 25th, 1978 – St. Paul, Minnesota votes to repeal its four-year old gay-rights ordinance by a margin of 2-1. Mary Richards was not happy.
April 25th,1979 – Jury selection begins in the trial of Dan White for the murder of S.F. Mayor George Moscone and gay activist Supervisor Harvey Milk. In a controversial verdict that led to the coining of the legal slang “Twinkie defense,” White was convicted of manslaughter rather than murder in the deaths of Milk and Moscone. White served five years of a seven-year prison sentence. Less than two years after his release, he returned to San Francisco and committed suicide. San Francisco Weekly has referred to White as “perhaps the most hated man in San Francisco’s history.”
April 25th,1993 – The third March on Washington happened and has an estimated attendance one million people. Although gays in the military was the major issue of that march it also marked the first time that same-sex marriage gained some notice, as well. On the day before the march, the Rev. Troy Perry, founder of the Metropolitan Community Church, married 2,000 gay couples in a ceremony on the steps of the Internal Revenue Service building. Although the event was largely obscured by the march itself, for those who participated it was a transforming occasion.
“I remember going down to escalators to catch the Metro to the IRS,” recalls Aleta Fenceroy of Omaha, who married her partner Jean Mayberry at that ceremony, “and the whole subway tunnel burst out with people singing ‘Going to the Chapel.’ It was one of those moments that still gives me goose bumps when I think of it.” Later that day, she and Mayberry walked around Dupont Circle with wreaths of flowers in their hair, receiving the congratulations of strangers.
April 25th, 1995 – Lawrence, Kansas passes an ordinance prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation. The law, the culmination of a 7-year struggle, is the only one of its type in the state of Kansas.
Accompanied by her “Georgia Band,” which included such jazz greats as Louis Armstrong, Thomas Dorsey, and Coleman Hawkins, she belted out song after song with titles like “Rough and Tumble Blues,” “Jealous Hearted Blues,” and “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom Blues.”
In spite of her marriage to “Pa,” Rainey she made no secret of her relationships with women. Indeed, her famous “Prove it on Me Blues,” recorded in 1928, sounds more like the testimony of a lesbian than a bisexual:
“Went out last night with a crowd of my friends, They must have been women, ’cause I don’t like no men. Wear my clothes just like a fan, Talk to gals just like any old man ‘Cause they say I do it, ain’t nobody caught me, Sure got to prove it on me”
April 27
April 27. 1951 – Luis Zapata, Mexico’s most productive and successful gay writer is born. Zapata studied French literature at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. In his best-known work, Las aventuras, desaventuras y sueños de Adonis García, el vampiro de la colonia Roma (1979; Adonis García: A Picaresque Novel), he chronicled the lives of urban homosexuals. His other works include Hasta en las mejores familias (1975; “Even in the Best Families”), De pétalos perennes (1981; “Of Perennial Petals”), De amor es mi negra pena (1983; “Of Love That Is My Hell”),
