Bound book of photographs created by Ted Sahl of the memorial service of Mayor George R. Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk. The Moscone-Milk assassinations were the killings of San Francisco mayor George Moscone and openly gay Supervisor Harvey Milk, who were shot and killed in San Francisco City Hall by former Supervisor Dan White on November 27, 1978. White was angry that Moscone refused to re-appoint him to his just-resigned Board of Supervisor's seat, and that Milk heavily lobbied against the re-appointment. Milk was (according to Time magazine) "the first openly gay man elected to any substantial political office in the history of the planet," leading to speculation from within the LGBT community as well as media and political circles that his assassination was a hate crime. These events also accelerated the political career of Dianne Feinstein, one of White's allies on the Board, who became mayor of San Francisco and eventually U.S. Senator for California. White was subsequently convicted of voluntary manslaughter, rather than of first degree murder. The verdict sparked the "White Night riots" in San Francisco, and led to the state of California abolishing the diminished capacity criminal defense. It also led to the urban legend of the "Twinkie defense," as many media reports had incorrectly described the defense as having attributed White's diminished capacity to the effects of sugar-laden junk food. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscone-Milk_assassinations compound object Scanned with Microtek Scanmaker 1000XL Pro; as a 600 dpi TIFF image in 8-bit Grayscale. Auto Level image processing and compressed into JPEG format using Photoshop CS3.
If you're wondering about permissions and what you can do with this item, a good starting point is the "rights information" on this page. See our terms of use for more tips.
Share your story
Has Calisphere helped you advance your research, complete a project, or find something meaningful? We'd love to hear about it; please send us a message.
