Harvey Milk Day is a day to educate your school about an extraordinary leader whose courageous work to end discrimination against the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community in the 1970s set the stage for many of the civil rights advances we see today.

Harvey Milk was an activist, organizer, and the first openly gay man elected to public office in the country as a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in the late 1970s. Harvey Milk came out and started organizing against discrimination of gay and lesbian business owners in the Castro District of San Francisco, and against the Briggs Initiative (this was an initiative on the California state ballot in 1978 that would have banned gays and lesbians from working in California schools). Milk was responsible for passing gay rights ordinances for the city of San Francisco and served eleven months in office before he was assassinated on November 27, 1978, along with San Francisco Mayor George Moscone. We celebrate Harvey Milk Day on his birthday, May 22.