Harvey Milk was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977, becoming the first openly gay man elected to public office in the United States. He had not even served a full year in office when he was shot by a homophobic fellow supervisor. A forceful champion of gays, racial minorities, women, working people, the disabled, and senior citizens, his eclectic background included stints as a schoolteacher, securities analyst on Wall Street, supporter of Barry Goldwater, Broadway theater assistant, bead-wearing hippie, operator of a camera store and organizer of the local business community in San Francisco. He rejected Judaism as a religion, but he was deeply influenced by the cultural values of his Jewish upbringing and his understanding of anti-Semitism and the Holocaust.
The Siegal Lifelong Learning Program will offer a three-week remote course in June titled “Harvey Milk: His Lives and Death.”
The course is part of the popular Jewish Lives Series from Yale University Press presented by Gregg Drinkwater, lecturer at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and visiting scholar at Bildner Center for the Study of Jewish Life at the Rutgers University.
A 35% discount is available on the book. Available on jewishlives.org, the book Harvey Milk: His Lives and Death is available with a 35% discount using code CWMILK.