Love and Hope: How Harvey Milk Broke the LGBT Barrier in Politics
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Love and Hope: How Harvey Milk Broke the LGBT Barrier in Politics Julian Cunningham, Emily Gillies, Maxwell Kahn, Asif Sattar, Jonathan Schneiderman Senior Division Group Performance Process Paper: 499 words Annotated Bibliography Primary Sources Associated Press. "Milk Left a Tape for Release If He Were Slain." The New York Times. Last modified November 28, 1978. Accessed January 4, 2020. https://nyti.ms/1kSczMC. This short article provides quotations from the tape that Milk left in case he was assassinated. Although we were not able to incorporate these quotations due to time constraints, this provided helpful context for Milk's mentality that encouraged gay visibility. Milk urged those around him to "come out" and this knowledge helped us phrase some of the non-direct quotations spoken by the character of Harvey Milk in our performance. Barnes, Clive. "Theater: The New York of 'Inner City.'" The New York Times (New York, NY), December 20, 1971. Accessed December 5, 2019. https://nyti.ms/1kJRbcp. This article is from Harvey Milk's producer days. His appearance is pretty much just a cameo; he is mentioned as a producer of Inner City. That is enough, though, for our purposes; it provides primary documentation of Milk's activities before he went to San Francisco and went into politics. "Body of Harvey Milk Being Removed from His Office." In Gale U.S. History Online Collection. Detroit, MI: Gale, 1978. Gale In Context: U.S. History (accessed November 12, 2019). https://link-gale-com.i.ezproxy.nypl.org/apps/doc/HZUKYM943312170/UHIC?u=nypl& sid=UHIC&xid=41fe512. This is a photo of Milk’s body being removed from his office. It’s not graphic, but it’s upsetting. If we were working in any category other than performance, we would have used it. "Burn, Baby, Burn!" National Review, February 10, 1984, 21. https://link-gale-com.i.ezproxy.nypl.org/apps/doc/A3132852/UHIC?u=nypl&sid=UHIC &xid=7061ff91. This is a contemporaneous conservative article about the San Franciscan protests by gays against the White's early release from prison; it argues that that "Of all reasons to get upset, the gay angle seems least consequential" because White killed Milk for personal political reasons rather than for homophobia. Given that White was openly homophobic, we think that his murdering of Milk was in part driven by homophobia, and that his personal resentment was partly in response to having been "beaten" by a gay man. However, it is partly a matter of interpretation, and it is incorrect to view Milk's assassination as the apotheosis of homophobic opposition to him; it was much more about Dan White's career than it was about the Briggs Initiative or any other policy issue. The article provides a good example of a perspective of the killing that de-emphasizes the homophobia of it entirely. 1 Cohen, Marc. Scott Smith and Harvey Milk. Photograph. Accessed February 28, 2020. http://www.strangebillions.com/harvey/. This photo, which we used on our poster, is suboptimal for a number of reasons. Namely, it is quite low-resolution and it is very difficult to track down (note the lack of a year in this citation). But it’s a beautiful and touching display of the love between Milk and Smith. Crewdson, John M. "Harvey Milk, Led Coast Homosexual Rights Fight." The New York Times. - Last modified November 28, 1978. Accessed December 8, 2019. https://nyti.ms/1iifMmH. This is the New York Times's obituary for Milk. It mostly sums up Milk's life, emphasizing the fact that he broke a barrier but understating the importance of the barrier; Milk was the first openly gay elected official in the country, but the article only states that he was the first in San Francisco. Its treatment of Milk's life and death leaves out some key details. For instance, it states that Milk "moved [to San Francisco] in 1969." This is technically true, but his 1969 move was more of a sojourn than a move. He moved back to New York in 1970 (a fact that is stated in several other sources in this bibliography, including The Mayor of Castro Street), and his political story is best traced back to his 1972 move, which we reflected in our performance. Similarly, the only information it presents about White is that he voted against one of Milk's gay rights ordinances; it thus implies that his assination of Milk was motivated entirely by homophobia. As previously discussed in this bibliography, this is inaccurate. However, in spite of all its flaws, the article gives a good overview of Milk's life and does an excellent job at describing his political persona and summarizing his policy stances. Interestingly, it spends a fair deal of space describing Milk's pre-murders-and-suicides support of Jonestown, a reflection of the fact that what was important to people when history was happening is not necessarily what gets remembered or what ultimately ends up being the most important part of the history's legacy. Davis, Rick. “Flashback: Meet San Francisco Harvey Milk.” Video. NBC News, November 27, 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9iYasWREzE. This contemporary newscast from March 1978 features a number of moving quotes from Milk, but the one that most stood out to us was: “If I'm fighting for the rights of gay people, and I am, then I must fight for the rights of all people and all the minorities—the senior citizens, the handicapped, the disenfranchised people—or I'm a hypocrite. I'm a little too old to give in to becoming a hypocrite.” That sums up the politician Milk eventually came to be very neatly, and was featured in an earlier version of our script. It also emphasizes an element of Milk’s activism that has been left out of the picture: his support for the elderly, whom he called the most oppressed group in the country, saying, “I don’t think we have a right to take people who’ve raised us, who’ve made us strong and healthy, and then toss them away like an empty can of beer. In this society, this government, the entire government structure [inaudible] like an empty can of beer.” 2 Friday, Wayne. "Milk for Supervisor — District 5." Bay Area Reporter, October 27, 1977, 16-17. Accessed December 8, 2019. https://cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d&d=BAR19771027.1.16&srpos=2&e=------197-en--20-BAR-1- -txt-txIN-Harvey+Milk----1977---1. This online reproduction of an LGBT San Francisco periodical contains ads for Castro Camera and for Milk's campaign, as well as an article about Rick Stokes, an opposing candidate in district 5 in the 1977 board of supervisors election, written by Harvey Milk, and a pro-Stokes article on the following page. This was especially helpful in getting a sense of the 1977 campaign, as well as helping us create versions of Milk's campaign posters. Had we thrice the time, we would have included some of the rhetoric Milk and the opposition used in their campaigns, based on the articles written here. This also provided some context for Milk's leadership within gay circles—he's mentioned on six of the twenty-two pages of the magazine. Globe and Mail (Toronto, Canada). "BRIEFLY Bryant Helps Break All-male Barrier." October 1, 1987, D6. https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A165143053/OVIC?u=nysl_me_71_svhs&sid=OVIC&xid =ec728b11. This article is about Bryant's joining a formerly men-only club after the Supreme Court ruled its gender discrimination illegal, though she said she disagreed with the ruling. It is important to us because it gives some of Bryant's biographical details, mentioning her being a Miss America runner-up. It also introduces her as a "Singer-songwriter," reflecting that it is in this role, and not the role of homophobic activist, that she was thought of at the time--even though the article was written in 1987, and touches on her activism as an afterthought at the end of the aritlce. While we were not able to include this nuance in our ten-minute performance, it is important to us; history is not a straightforward narrative, and how people think about other people and events shifts over time. "Harvey Milk." In Civil Rights in America. American Journey. Woodbridge, CT: Primary Source Media, 1999. Gale In Context: U.S. History (accessed February 29, 2020). https://link-gale-com.i.ezproxy.nypl.org/apps/doc/EJ2210017139/UHIC?u=nypl&sid=U HIC&xid=95473a5c. We used this photo on our poster. It captures Dan White’s two victims at a happy moment. "Harvey Milk Meets John Briggs." MP4 video, 02:54. Bay Area Television Archive. August 6, 1978. Accessed December 12, 2019. https://diva.sfsu.edu/collections/sfbatv/bundles/190667. This source depicts Harvey Milk and John Briggs engaging in a televised debate over the proposed Proposition 6. This source is critical, as it was used in part to inspire our dialogue during our interpretation of a debate between Milk and Briggs. The video of the debate from the time provides a different perspective on the issue, and very much helped 3 our acting interpretations of Milk and Briggs. It was also useful to compare the archival video of the debates with the version presented in the 2008 film Milk. Harvey Milk. Photograph. HISTORY. The History Channel, August 21, 2018. Getty Images. Accessed February 28, 2020. https://www.history.com/topics/gay-rights/harvey-milk. We used this photo on our poster. "Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in San Francisco, was murdered..." In Almanac, edited by Carol Brennan, Kathleen J.