[Editor’s Note: Kathy Olmsted is back for another guest post. Hurrah!]
On this day in 1979, Dan White, former police officer, fire fighter, and San Francisco County Supervisor, was sentenced to seven years in prison for assassinating two public officials, one of them openly gay. The lenient sentence provoked riots in San Francisco, a movement for tough sentencing laws, and, eventually, a revolution in attitudes toward gays and lesbians.
In the 1970s, thousands of gays and lesbians moved to San Francisco, which was becoming the gay mecca of the west coast. White represented conservative, working-class residents who resented the ways that their city was changing. He clashed many times with Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk, a national leader in the gay rights movement and the first openly gay elected local official of any large city in the United States. In November 1978, White resigned from the board of supervisors in a fit of pique, and then asked Moscone to reappoint him. Milk advised Moscone not to do so. On November 28, 1978, White entered San Francisco city hall through a window, apparently to avoid a metal detector. After a brief conversation with Moscone, White shot the mayor dead. Then he reloaded his gun and went to Milk’s office, where he executed his political opponent by shooting him in the head.
Milk’s friends were worried about the trial from the beginning. Although White’s “twinkie defense” seemed laughable (his lawyer argued that White had not known what he was doing because excessive junk food consumption had altered his brain chemistry), some jurors seemed compassionate to the killer. They wept openly in sympathy when his tape-recorded confession was played in court. If he had just killed Moscone, observers at the trial believed, he would have gotten the death penalty. But by killing Milk, he seemed to trigger the homophobia of the jury. The manslaughter verdict enraged thousands of San Franciscans, who gathered at city hall. “He got away with murder!” the crowd chanted, as people began to break windows and set police cars on fire.
California soon got rid of the “diminished capacity” or “twinkie” defense, and began passing draconian sentencing laws, culminating in 1994 with Three Strikes. White was released in 1984, and committed suicide less than two years later.
This week, Mark Leno, one of several openly gay members of the California State Legislature, succeeded in persuading the Assembly to pass a bill designating May 22, Milk’s birthday, as “Harvey Milk Day.” If it gets through the Senate, Gov. Schwarzenegger may well sign it. And last week, the California Supreme Court voted to legalize gay marriage. The four-member majority included three justices appointed by conservative Republican governors.
[Editor’s Update: You can find an account of the White Night Riot here.]
The Edge of the American West 
17 comments
May 21, 2008 at 8:41 pm
The Modesto Kid
I did not know that Jim Jones had been on the SF housing authority under Moscone.
Do you think the “revolution in attitudes toward gays and lesbians” was triggered by the murder of Harvey Milk and the sentencing of his murderer? Seems to me like it was already well under way by that time and like those events were incidental.
May 21, 2008 at 9:30 pm
grackle
The murders also resulted in the rise of the lamentable Diane Feinstein to new prominence with her promotion from deputy mayor to mayor. Oh, what might have been, if she could have remained in her well deserved obscurity.
May 21, 2008 at 10:51 pm
Vance Maverick
Jones was a major community figure, and the People’s Temple was not self-evidently cultish in the bad sense until near the end.
May 22, 2008 at 2:54 am
Ben Alpers
I grew up in Berkeley and was home sick from high school on the day Milk and Moscone were assassinated so I watched the endless TV coverage of it. What a weird and apocalyptic month November 1978 was in the Bay Area!
And I gotta disagree somewhat with Vance Maverick regarding the Peoples Temple. Jim Jones was a major community figure and there were some admirable sides to his work and message (particular in the areas of aiding the poor and racial reconciliation). But the Peoples Temple’s slide into cultish behavior had begun several years before its bloody end, at least according to everything I’ve read and seen about it.
May 22, 2008 at 7:35 am
shadowcook
I agree with Ben about Jim Jones, who I saw frequently at demonstrations around SF in the mid-70s. In the eyes of young political activists in the peace and solidarity movements like myself, Jones seemed little different from the Rev. Cecil Williams, who also spoke at demonstrations and represented a similar but not cultish constituency.
Thereafter, by the early 80s, conspiracy theorists had whittled down their explanations to the possibilities that Moscone was the main target, Jim Jones had more to do with the assassinations than has been understood (notwithstanding his death 10 days before), and Dan White had been promised a short prison term by whoever it was that paid him to do it. None of the theories were coherent, but the events were sufficiently inexplicable to keep the theories in circulation — at least in the jazz clubs, like the Cheshire Cat on Haight, where I spent far too much time.
By chance, I was walking around the Civic Center plaza to the BART or the bus on Market on the night of the verdict. Very scary.
May 22, 2008 at 8:59 am
Vance Maverick
I was young and in LA when this all went down (as the kids say), so I gladly defer. Still I don’t think we’re disagreeing much. Jones was first prominent, then turned more visibly crazy, then went to Guyana, then the end. Much as shadowcook says.
May 23, 2008 at 8:31 am
John Emerson
In the current media climate it’s impossible for Jones to be treated fairly. There are a lot of things people don’t know about.
May 23, 2008 at 9:05 am
The Modesto Kid
Ones that outweigh the things people do know about? Because that seems like it would take quite a bit of counter-balance.
May 23, 2008 at 9:22 am
John Emerson
You’ve drunk the Koolaid, Kid.
May 23, 2008 at 9:34 am
John Emerson
Johnson, Koresh, McVeigh, and Manson were all victims of the same enormous media smear campaign. Things are not what they seem, sheeple.
May 23, 2008 at 12:18 pm
Johnny Coelacanth
“Johnson, Koresh, McVeigh, and Manson were all victims of the same enormous media smear campaign”
Oh, sure. None of them did what they were accused of, right? That nice Dahmer boy was probably a vegetarian, too.
May 23, 2008 at 12:32 pm
ari
Johnny, you appear to be unfamiliar with John’s work. He is a master of his craft. Actually, in his hands, trolling becomes the highest form of art one can imagine. Sometimes it takes my breath away [wipes tear aside and continues typing]. Really.
May 24, 2008 at 5:16 am
Maggie Jochild
I don’t usually blog-whore, but my first-hand account of the events of May 21, 1979 (before, during and after) was picked up by Group News Blog and then The Raw Story, so it’s racketing around out there: The White Night Riot, 21 May 1979 and Lesbians Against Police Violence
I was one of the group of lesbians who called for the rally the evening of Dan White’s ludicrous verdict, and led that rally to SF City Hall where the riot began.
Thanks for including this memorial here at your blog. It’s critically important history.
Years later, Dan White confessed to his friend Frank Fanzon that he had intended to go on and kill Carol Ruth Silver and then-California Assemblyman Willie Brown, but had not been able to complete his list of executions. Despite reloading after emptying his gun into Moscone and coolly walking down the hall to Milk’s office where he emptied his gun again, he was immediately protected and supported by the police (who raised money for his defense by selling and wearing “Free Dan White” T-shirts).
His lawyer played the conservative, all-older-female, no queers and no African-Americans jury perfectly, by using “twinkie” only once as a code word (it has another meaning besides the confection) and playing on how Harvey Milk had assaulted Dan White’s masculinity by “smirking” at him. The comprehension that if White had only killed Moscone, he would have been electrocuted, but his additional murder of Milk elicited enough sympathy to get him off — this is what ignited the riot that night.
And yes, Dianne Feinstein’s break into political prominence is a direct result of these assassinations. I also wrote about that (from an inside view) earlier, at Dianne Feinstein, Opportunist.
May 24, 2008 at 7:09 am
John Emerson
Despite reloading after emptying his gun into Moscone and coolly walking down the hall to Milk’s office where he emptied his gun again, he was immediately protected and supported by the police (who raised money for his defense by selling and wearing “Free Dan White” T-shirts).
A friend of mine believes that the police are not under real civilian control in any American city. Policing is qualitatively different than most other government functions except warfare, and control of people with responsibilities and powers of that kind is always dodgy.
May 24, 2008 at 9:35 am
ari
Thanks, Maggie, I’ve updated the post to include a link to your site. And please feel free to promote your work here whenever you want. We encourage whoring of all kinds on the Edge of the West.
February 4, 2009 at 3:42 pm
Al
Do you have Graphs
February 4, 2009 at 3:56 pm
Vance
Oh yes, there will be graphs.