American Jewish History

Movements for social justice have often produced iconic figures whose names become identified with the cause. Can one think about the movement for racial justice without the name of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., coming to mind, or of women's suffrage without thinking about Elizabeth Cady Stanton or Susan B. Anthony?

If there is an equivalent for the LGBTQ movement, it may very well be Harvey Milk. His successful 1977 campaign for a seat on San Francisco's Board of Supervisors made him the first out-of-the-closet gay man elected to public office in the United States. Within months, San Francisco passed a bill prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Milk also was highly visible throughout California in the successful 1978 effort to defeat Proposition 6, a statewide ballot referendum that would have denied employment in public schools to anyone who came out or who spoke supportively of homosexuality. Then, less than a year after his election, he and San Francisco mayor George Moscone were assassinated by Dan White, a former city supervisor known for his anti-gay views. White's trial provoked massive demonstrations, including major rioting and police attacks in San Francisco. In the decades since Milk's death, he has been the subject of a documentary film and a Hollywood feature movie, both of which won Oscars. His face adorns a US postage stamp, and he was posthumously awarded the Medal of Freedom by President Obama.

Lillian Faderman's biography of Milk, published in the Jewish Studies series of Yale University Press, offers insight into the how and why of Milk's iconic status. Concise and highly readable, it presents a lively and dynamic account of his life, both public and private. A particular strength of the book is that Faderman does not uncritically lionize Milk. We see him as both an important historical figure and as an individual with deep personal struggles.

Milk was born in Long Island in 1930. His grandfather was a Lithuanian Jewish immigrant who ran his own dry goods store and established the first synagogue in Woodmere, New York. According to Faderman, Milk's family upbringing instilled in him a strong sense of "tikkun olam," the obligation for Jews to make things right in the world. Reaching adulthood, Milk struggled to find a focus for his life. He moved around the country, returning to New York in the early 1960s and working [End Page 634] for several years on Wall Street, a career move that provided financial security but little personal satisfaction.

In these years, Milk made contact with Tom O'Horgan, a rising figure in the New York theater world who would direct both Hair and Jesus Christ Superstar. For Milk, according to Faderman, the theater revealed "who he wanted to be," but roles of any consequence never materialized (55). On the road again, he made a first attempt at a life in San Francisco in 1969, and then returned and settled there permanently in 1972.

These were the early years of gay liberation. San Francisco's LGBTQ community was becoming more visible than ever before. Milk opened a camera store on Castro Street, which was then the center of the public gay male world, and soon he was organizing local businesses, including several gay-owned ones, into a neighborhood political force. In 1973, he decided to run for city supervisor. Though he lost the election badly, the campaign was a turning point. According to Faderman, "he had finally discovered—after a lifetime of searching—what he was meant to do, and now he would put everything into winning the right to do it" (80).

It took three more campaigns for public office before Milk was chosen to represent on the Board of Supervisors the district in which LGBTQ people were concentrated. Unique as his position as a gay elected official was, Faderman makes clear that he was in no sense a radical. "He was most comfortable in the role of maverick...