November 27, 1978: Harvey Milk and George Moscone are assassinated.
When he was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977, Harvey Milk became the first openly gay male ever to be elected to office in the United States. He served from January 1978 until his assassination by Dan White, a former member of the board. During his brief service as supervisor, Milk proved himself to be both unpredictable and energetic; he was a tireless advocate for gay rights and an ally of San Francisco mayor George Moscone, who eventually signed into law the “most stringent and encompassing” anti-discriminatory gay rights bill “in the nation”. Milk also campaigned against the Briggs Initiative, a California proposition that would have made it illegal for gays and lesbians to work in the state’s public schools.
Just ten months after the start of his term, Milk and Mayor Moscone were assassinated by former policeman and firefighter Dan White, who had served alongside White on the Board of Supervisors and had clashed often with his more liberal colleagues on the board throughout his term. White resigned from the board on November 10, 1978 and was replaced by a more liberal supervisor, appointed by Moscone himself. On the day of the appointment, White entered Mayor Moscone’s office at city hall and killed him with a revolver. He met Milk on the way to his own (former) office and killed him as well, with five shots to the wrist, chest, and head.
White turned himself in and was convicted in an extremely controversial trial of voluntary manslaughter, due to what became known derisively as the “Twinkie defense” - White’s lawyers were able to argue that he had been depressed and that his mental capacity had been diminished, citing his consumption of junk food as evidence. White eventually received a seven-year prison sentence, which (combined with other factors) enraged the gay community of San Francisco so much that the White Night riots erupted the same day White’s sentence was announced. White eventually committed suicide, but Milk was immortalized, despite his short career, as a martyr and icon. In 2009, he was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom ”as a pioneer of the LGBT civil rights movement” and for “his exceptional leadership and dedication to equal rights.”