To commemorate Harvey Milk Day, TIME republishes a snippet of its coverage on the remembrance of his death. Milk was one of the first openly gay politicians in the United States. This article was originally published in the December 11, 1978 issue.
Another Day of Death
A former San Francisco official kills the mayor and a supervisor
The gathering constellation of torchlights nickered first at the corner of 18th and Castro streets, in the center of the homosexual community that makes up about one-eighth of San Francisco’s population. Held high by marchers stepping to the slow cadence of three drums, the bobbing lights moved down Market Street, their brilliance growing as the grieving crowd multiplied. By the time they reached the steps of the bronze-domed city hall, the crowd of youthful homosexuals, male and female, had been joined by many more conventional citizens, and an army of some 30,000 mourners expressed the sorrow of the shaken city.
At the flower-strewn steps, the mood of the civil rights rebellion of the 1960s was evoked as the crystalline voice of Folk Singer Joan Baez led the assembled marchers in the familiar songs: Kumbaya, Amazing Grace and Oh, Freedom. More candles were lit, more wreaths dropped on the steps, and an undercurrent of bitterness broke through the sadness. “Are you happy, Anita?” asked one crudely lettered sign in cruel reference to homosexuality’s hated foe, Anita Bryant.
Once stately and even staid, a very citadel of culture in California, San Francisco has been scarred repeatedly in recent years by outbreaks of violence and turmoil (see following story). It was horrified two weeks ago when it awoke to the realization that it had nourished the Peoples Temple, an ostensibly humanitarian and religious cult whose leader, Jim Jones, had ordered the assassination of California Congressman Leo Ryan and then led 911 followers to their deaths in a frenzy of mass suicide and murder in remote Guyana. But San Francisco’s shock was more centrally focused last week from the moment when a tearful Dianne Feinstein, president of the board of supervisors, stepped outside her city hall office to tell a stunned group of city employees and reporters: “It is my duty to inform you that both Mayor Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk have been shot and killed.”
San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk, left, and Mayor George Moscone are shown in the mayor’s office during the signing of the city’s gay rights bill in April 1977.
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