Harvey Milk Home & Castro Camera
Harvey Milk Home & Castro Camera
573-575 Castro Street
San Francisco, CA
ay activist Harvey Milk's (1930-1978) story has been told for decades in LGBT circles, but it only came more widely to light when Sean Penn won an Oscar for playing Milk on the big screen. Originally from Brooklyn, Milk moved to San Francisco in 1968, where he worked first as a financial analyst and four years later opened a camera shop in a Victorian storefront in the Castro district with his lover, Scott Smith. The roomy store had a hand-painted shingle on the door that read "Yes, We Are Very Open," and Milk and Smith lived upstairs.
As Milk became increasingly active in local politics, Castro Camera functioned as an ad hoc community center and Milk was the "unofficial mayor of Castro Street." Signs in the store's large picture windows advertised demonstrations, protests, and neighborhood meetings; camera and film sales became secondary to politics. Milk became involved in organizing gay voter registration drives, helping to establish the first Castro Street Fair, speaking out against Anita Bryant's antigay campaign, and working against the Briggs initiative, a proposal to bar lesbians and gay men from teaching in California public schools.
The election of the liberal, gay-supportive mayor George Moscone in 1975 paved the way for Milk's election to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977, making him the first openly gay elected official in the city's history. But the following year, Milk and Moscone were gunned down by the radically conservative supervisor, Dan White. Sensing his vulnerability to assassination, Milk once said, "If a bullet should enter my brain, let the bullet destroy every closet door."
Paula Martinac is the author of six books and numerous articles on LGBT topics. Her blog, The Queerest Places, chronicles LGBT historic sites. She holds an M.A. in history and works for a community development organization in Pittsburgh, PA.
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