The museum is located at 4127 18th St. in San Francisco‘s Castro District. It will be open 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. on Harvey Milk Day.
Harvey Milk (1930-1978) was the first openly gay elected official in California and one of the first in the United States. He served on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors for 11 months before he and San Francisco Mayor George Moscone were shot to death on November 27, 1978, by Dan White, a former board colleague of Milk’s. The GLBT History Museum commemorates Harvey Milk on an ongoing basis in a number of ways.
“Queer Past Becomes Present,” the long-term exhibition in the museum’s Main Gallery, includes an exhibit on Milk’s life and death. Among the historical objects on display are the bullhorn Milk used to lead many protest marches and the suit he was wearing at the moment he was assassinated. Visitors also can hear Milk’s voice in the political will he recorded when he was serving on the Board of Supervisors.
In addition, the museum shop offers a reproduction of a historical t-shirt produced by the legal defence committee that raised funds on behalf of protesters arrested during the White Night Riot, an uprising that took place at San Francisco City Hall after a jury found Dan White guilty of manslaughter instead of murder in the killings of Milk and Moscone. Also available in the museum shop are reproductions of a t-shirt produced for Milk’s 1977 campaign for the Board of Supervisors, as well as postcards reproducing historical photographs of Milk.
For more information on the GLBT History Museum, visit www.glbthistory.org/museum.
Photo By Daniel Nicoletta derivative work: Hekerui [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons
