On Nov. 27, 1978, former San Francisco Supervisor Dan White assassinated Supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone.

Milk had been elected in 1977 and, once on the Board of Supervisors, was able to pass a gay rights ordinance that protected people from being fired from their jobs because of their sexual orientation. At the time, California’s legislature was debating a law that would have banned gays and lesbians from becoming teachers. Milk is remembered as one of the first openly gay people elected to public office.

According to Harvey’s nephew Stuart Milk, Harvey predicted his own death saying, “May the bullets that enter my brain smash through every closet door.”

In Dallas, we can claim Milk as one of our own. He moved to San Francisco from Dallas, a city he hated.

Milk lived in Dallas twice. The first time was in 1958. Although he was a teacher in New York, in Dallas he had trouble finding a job and worked as an assistant credit manager for a local department store. That stint in Dallas only last four months.

In 1967, Milk was transferred to Dallas from New York, where he was a financial analyst for Bache & Co. His Dallas office was in the Mercantile Building, which is now apartments and known simply as “the Merc.”

He lived on Charming Lane in Oak Lawn, which is directly across what’s now the Katy Trail from the Dallas Theatre Center, between Blackburn and Haskell avenues.

In 1968, he moved to 2521 Turtle Creek Blvd. at Turtle Creek and Maple avenues, the same complex where Resource Center founder John Thomas lived. A year later, he was living in a different apartment in the same complex.

From Dallas, Milk moved to San Francisco where he opened a camera shop on the Castro. That building is now preserved by Human Rights Campaign in memory of Milk.

— David Taffet