The Assassination of Harvey Milk

Harvey Milk, elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in November 1977, was the first openly gay person to hold major political office in California. On November 27, 1978, he and Mayor George Moscone were shot and killed in City Hall by former supervisor Dan White, who had resigned from the board weeks earlier and then sought his seat back — a request both Milk and Moscone had opposed. White gained entry to City Hall through a basement window to avoid metal detectors. White shot Moscone first in his office, then reloaded and walked to Milk's office, where he shot him five times, including two shots to the head. The calculated and methodical nature of the killings — the reloading, the two separate executions — left little room for doubt about premeditation. White immediately turned himself in to a former police colleague and gave a recorded confession. At trial in 1979, White's attorneys deployed what became known as the "Twinkie Defense" — arguing that White's consumption of junk food was evidence of depression and diminished capacity. The jury convicted him not of murder but of voluntary manslaughter on both counts, resulting in a sentence of just seven years and eight months. The verdict ignited the White Night riots, in which thousands of gay residents and allies gathered in the Castro and marched on City Hall, setting police vehicles on fire. Police subsequently conducted a violent retaliatory sweep through the Castro. White was paroled in 1984 and died by suicide in 1985. Harvey Milk's legacy grew enormously after his death — he became a martyr for the gay rights movement, was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009, and has been the subject of major films, plays, and documentaries. His assassination remains one of the most politically charged murders in American history.