Harvey Milk was the first openly gay man elected to public office in California, winning a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977. He sponsored the city’s gay-rights ordinance, helped defeat the statewide Briggs Initiative (which would have barred gay people from teaching in public schools), and was assassinated alongside Mayor George Moscone by former supervisor Dan White at City Hall in November 1978. Milk was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009.

Why it’s been targeted

In June 2023, the Temecula Valley Unified School District board (CA) voted 3–2 to reject an elementary social-studies textbook that mentioned Milk; board president Joseph Komrosky called Milk a “pedophile” during the meeting. The state ultimately fined the district and required adoption. Florida HB 1557 has driven removals of Milk-related picture books (Pride: The Story of Harvey Milk and the Rainbow Flag by Rob Sanders) across multiple districts per PEN America’s Index.