San Francisco civic leaders and the Italian consulate dedicated a plaque to the late mayor George Moscone in the North Beach neighborhood October 4, paying tribute to him as an early advocate of LGBTQ equality. The plaque is the first in a series to be dedicated to Italian Americans in the neighborhood, known for being the city's Little Italy.
October is Italian American Heritage Month and also LGBTQ History Month.
Current Mayor London Breed paid tribute to her predecessor and discussed his November 27, 1978 assassination alongside Harvey Milk, who became the first gay man elected to office in California when he won a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in November 1977.
"As we all know, George Moscone took a stand against discrimination and hate," Breed said. "He worked hand in hand with Supervisor Harvey Milk, the first LGBT supervisor in this city. Unfortunately, he lost his life in this fight."
Moscone hailed from the city's Marina neighborhood, then an Italian American enclave. After going to St. Ignatius High School and UC Hastings (now UC Law San Francisco), he married Gina Moscone, who died in 2022 as the Bay Area Reporter reported at the time.
Moscone served on the Board of Supervisors before being elected to the state Senate, where he eventually became the majority leader and worked alongside then-Assemblymember Willie L. Brown Jr. — also a future mayor of San Francisco — at repealing California's sodomy law. The repeal was signed into law by then-governor Jerry Brown.
Willie Brown, now 90, was present at the October 4 event. He told the B.A.R. afterward his favorite memory of Moscone, his late colleague and friend.
"He had me come to something that the Italian community restaurant owners did, probably once a month, and it would be Saturday and you had to speak Italian and you had to be Italian — and I was Brown-nini," he said.
Moscone as mayor
Moscone became mayor in 1976. He was known for trying to expand the "old boys club" that had run San Francisco — appointing women, racial minorities, and LGBTQ people in record numbers to his administration. In 1977, for example, Moscone appointed the first lesbian, the late pioneer Del Martin, and the first Black woman, Kathleen Rand Reed, as city commissioners. They were named to the San Francisco Commission on the Status of Women.
One of Moscone's first moves as mayor was to appoint Milk to the city's Permit Appeals Board. It marked the first time an LGBT person had been given a mayoral appointment to a major oversight body, as the B.A.R. noted in a 2018 article about the George Moscone Collection housed at the University of the Pacific Library's Holt-Atherton Special Collections. In April 1978, Moscone signed an ordinance prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation that had been introduced by Milk a few months after he was sworn in to his supervisorial seat.
Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin, who represents North Beach, paid tribute to this element of Moscone's legacy.
"George Moscone ushered in the current era of San Francisco politics," he said. "There would be no Mayor Willie Brown, no Mayor London Breed, or the diversity represented on the Board of Supervisors had George Moscone not fundamentally changed San Francisco politics half a century ago. We owe him a debt of gratitude."
(Peskin and Breed are both running for mayor in the November election.)
Not everyone was fond of the progressive Moscone administration or of his alliance with Milk, who represented the Castro LGBTQ neighborhood. Then-supervisor Dan White, who represented the Excelsior, voted against the gay rights ordinance. He resigned from the board on November 10, 1978, citing low pay and financial struggles.
But White soon changed his mind and approached Moscone about wanting his supervisor's seat back. Moscone made it clear he would be appointing someone more progressive. White responded by returning to City Hall to kill Moscone and Milk. White served only five of a seven-year sentence for his crimes, after which he killed himself on October 21, 1985.
White, a former police officer and firefighter, had been convicted of manslaughter instead of murder by an all-white, predominantly Catholic jury, which prompted riots and fires in the Civic Center Plaza — as well as police reprisals in the Castro in what was known as the White Night riots.
Moscone's death led to then-board president Dianne Feinstein assuming the mayoralty, which she held until 1988. (Feinstein went on to be elected a U.S. senator from California in 1992, a position she held until her death in September 2023.)
It was a divisive time for San Francisco that has taken decades to move on from. Jennifer Consalvi-Hodges, president of the San Francisco Little Italy Honor Walk, said Moscone was ahead of his time and helped pave the way for a more tolerant city.
"San Francisco is an exceptional city because its people have tolerance with one another," she said.
Congressmember Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), a former House speaker, spoke to that tolerance. She grew up in Baltimore's Little Italy and recalled that when she moved to San Francisco, she would be asked about the diverse communities of the City by the Bay.
"I've always answered the same thing — the pride I took in my own heritage enabled me to appreciate the pride each and every one of the other beautiful diverse communities took in theirs," Pelosi said. "So many have spoken about George Moscone and his record. He was the golden boy, wouldn't you say, Willie?"
Responded Brown from the crowd, "Yes, he was."
Italian Americans' contributions to SF
Breed paid tribute to Italian Americans' contributions to the city.
"Our city's history is interwoven with the Italian American immigrants who settled here," she said, giving as examples the North Beach restaurant scene, Fisherman's Wharf, and mayors Angelo Rossi, Joseph Alioto, and Moscone. She also called out Alioto's daughter Angela, a former Board of Supervisors president who was in the crowd attending the event.
Pelosi became emotional as she recalled her family's relationship with the Moscone and Alioto families. She recalled Moscone's late wife Gina.
"His beautiful, beautiful, beautiful wife, and then widow, was a force in our community her whole life — whether it was the arts or the veterans war memorial — she was a force in our community, as Jonathan has been as well," she said, referring to one of the Moscone children. "I get a little emotional talking about Gina because I love her so much. I'm so happy my daughters are here; they all grew up together and with Angela Alioto's children as well. They grew up together not just because we're Italian Americans but because of the sense of community that we all shared. George was special. He was, I think I can say this safely Willie, humorous from time to time. More times he thought than we thought but nonetheless he was principled, he was brilliant."
Pelosi invited Jonathan Moscone to the mic. The younger Moscone, a gay man, is a former executive director of the California Arts Council and former chief producer of Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.
"I don't know what to say. I don't know if I speak for my family, but he did so much but he was also our dad," he said. "Events like this are really beautiful and important. They bring out the sadness because life is filled with both of those things. We'll get to see him every day when we come to OJ's — there's a butterfly going around here; I think that's my mother Gina and I think she's judging everyone's clothes — but just to see him, we miss him."
Moscone was referring to Original Joe's Restaurant, across the street from the plaque, which is at Stockton and Union streets.
Sergio Strozzi, a gay man who is consul general of Italy in San Francisco, said that this is the first in a series of plaques commemorating Italian Americans in the city. Others will feature AP Giannini, who founded Bank of America and loaned money necessary to rebuild the city after the 1906 earthquake and fire leveled it, and Francis Ford Coppola, director of "The Godfather" and other films.
Strozzi said his husband, Simone Mazzetto, an artist, designed the plaque.
"You have left an incredible mark in San Francisco," he said of his spouse. "I might be forgotten as consul general in the years ahead, but you won't be."
District 2 Supervisor Catherine Stefani said the project is one way to help the Italian American community feel heard. She also spearheaded an effort to officially commemorate Italian Heritage Day (the city nixed Columbus Day in 2018; Peskin, North Beach's supervisor, was the lone dissenter at the board vote).
"I'm the loud, proud Italian American on the Board of Supervisors," said Stefani, who is running for state Assembly in November. "I always think about what my family taught me. Italian families are about fun, good and other things, but we're also about public service."
The Italian Heritage Parade will be in North Beach Sunday, October 13, at 12:30 p.m.
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