The life of slain gay rights activist and politician Harvey Milk has been chronicled in the 1982 book The Mayor of Castro Street , lionized in the 1984 documentary The Times of Harvey Milk, and memorialized in the 1995 opera Harvey Milk. A public plaza, recreation center, library, two schools – one in San Francisco, the other in New York – even a grove of trees in Israel all bear his name.
Milk, who penned a political column for the Bay Area Reporter in the mid-1970s, went on to become the first gay man to hold political office in a major U.S. city when he won a seat on the city's Board of Supervisors in 1977. To many in the LGBT community, especially baby boomer gays, Milk is a martyr and a hero. His famous quote – "You've gotta give them hope" – still rings true today.
Yet younger LGBT people often have never heard of Milk, who was assassinated by ex-Supervisor Dan White in San Francisco City Hall on November 27, 1978, or his accomplishments. That is about to change.
As the 30th anniversary of Milk's historic election night victory approaches, his feat will be feted on the big screen and in new tributes planned here in the Bay Area. A feature film based on the book about Milk's life directed by Bryan Singer is tentatively set for release in 2007. The role of Milk has yet to be filled.
A new installation of photographs marking Milk's life is set to be unveiled in the Castro this spring. Three panels of black and white photographs will be installed on the fence at Harvey Milk Plaza above the Castro Muni station.
By summer a boosters group for the city's F-Line trolley, which ends in the Castro, plans to dedicate one of the historic cars to Milk, only the second person to receive such an honor. The group is looking for photos of Milk riding Muni and plans to focus on Milk's support for public transportation.
The long-planned bust of Milk to be placed in City Hall is also scheduled to be displayed somewhere in the Beaux Arts building in 2007. Funding for the project – estimated to cost from $30,000 to $50,000 – is nearly in place and the city's Arts Commission plans to ask several artists to submit models of the bust from which one will be selected.
Dan Nicoletta, 51, who worked on Milk's political campaigns and at his camera shop in the Castro – the storefront at 575 Castro is a city landmark – is helping to bring the new memorials and film about Milk to life. He said it is important that a new generation of LGBT activists be told of Milk's legacy and be given a place to find the hope Milk felt they rightly deserved.
"For me personally, the gravity of having a monument in City Hall speaks to having a pilgrimage site for future generations of activists," said Nicoletta, a member of the Harvey Milk City Hall Memorial Committee. "No other monument would have the same resonance as a formal sculpture inside City Hall because that was the site of his ascendancy and his murder."
Long path for memorial
On October 15, 2001 the Board of Supervisors adopted a resolution urging the city's Arts Commission to find an appropriate location within City Hall for the permanent placement of an artwork honoring Milk. The proposal went nowhere until then-Supervisor Matt Gonzalez pledged in early 2003 to help raise anywhere from $50,000 to $100,000 for the memorial.
While that effort also fizzled out, the memorial committee formed in 2004 to spearhead the effort. The drive to commission the bust received new life last year when the Bob Ross Foundation – named after the B.A.R.'s founder and longtime publisher who died in December 2003 – awarded a $25,000 challenge grant to the committee to once again kick-start the campaign's fundraising efforts.
The foundation recently decided to take a larger role in funding the project. B.A.R. publisher Thomas Horn, who also heads the Ross foundation, said the nonprofit does not expect to fund it "100 percent" but is "looking at playing a major role." Horn added the memorial project is an appropriate one for the foundation.
"Harvey and Bob were good friends. Harvey wrote the political column for maybe three years before he ran for the Board of Supervisors," said Horn. "I think it is important to the community. If Bob was alive I believe he would be enthusiastically supportive of the project."
To date, Nicoletta said $16,000 has been raised. Originally, the committee hoped to install it this year, but it now expects the bust to be unveiled sometime between May and November 2007. In the meantime, the photographic memorial should be in place later this spring.
Plaza renovation
As part of the new landscaping for Harvey Milk Plaza, the series of 12 photos taken by local photographers is being sponsored by the Department of Public Works' urban forestry division, Supervisor Bevan Dufty's office, and the Merchants of Upper Market and Castro, which provided $1,200 toward the installation. Nicoletta said the total cost is around $7,500.
"Bevan's office thought it would be a great feature to bring in some historical references to Harvey Milk in addition to the bronze plaque that is already there. It will be a really nice, great tribute to Harvey," said Nicoletta. "It traces the arc of his political vision and career. We start with his military history, which informs his gay identity, and finish with a candlelight march flyer calling people to action the day of his assassination, and lots of points in between, from his hippy era look and his run for the Board of Supervisors to his street activism."
Photos will also be used as part of the Museum in Motion display dedicated to Milk and his advocacy around public transit. Creation of the historical display is estimated to cost $10,000 and sponsors are needed to help defray the cost. It is the second streetcar display to honor a local person; the late newspaper columnist Herb Caen received the first.
"When we started making a mental list of the people who we could select to honor this way Harvey had to be right at the top of the list. Aside from his iconic status and pioneering status in the community, Harvey was also a vociferous advocate of public transit at a time when it wasn't as popular as it is today," said Rick Laubscher, president of the Market Street Railway, the nonprofit group that restores old streetcars and oversees the trolley line's museum project.
Laubscher, a fourth generation San Franciscan who covered Milk for KRON back in the day, recalled how Milk would always boast he was the only supervisor to take Muni to work each day.
"Everyday he would take a streetcar from Castro to City Hall. He was always advocating for better Muni service and a more realistic Muni budget," said Laubscher. "Really, in that way Harvey was a pioneer in the new urbanism movement."
There already are several spots in the city where one can find a homage to Milk and perhaps a little hope. Three murals, two in the Castro and one downtown, depict Milk and are often overlooked by passersby.
Above his camera shop in the window of his old apartment is a painting, done by Josef Norris and completed in June 1998, of Milk wearing a rainbow flag T-shirt smiling down on the street he so loved. Milk also can be found in the "San Francisco Renaissance" mural painted in the atrium of the Monadnock building at 685 Market Street. Milk, wearing a red tunic, stands besides other famous city residents, such as Gold Rush era actress Lotta Crabtree and famous architect Bernard Maybeck, designer of the Palace of Fine Arts.
The third mural features two depictions of Milk, one as a clown and another in his street clothes. Drawn by Johanna Poethig on the side of the Harvey Milk Recreation Center at 50 Scott Street, above Duboce Park, the artwork will be demolished when the city renovates the building. Nicoletta said a new mural is planned for the site and is supposed to include a new rendering of Milk.
"I really have a soft spot for that because one of the photos represented there is a photo I took of him as a clown. I love that mural to death," said Nicoletta. "The aging of it is neat. It evokes just how many years it's been since all that happened. When it finally goes away there will be a huge void in my heart. But what these artists come up with will be equally exciting."
For more information about the Milk memorial planned for City Hall visit www.milkmemorial.org. Donations to the project can be sent via the Web site.