Today: The World Remembers Harvey Milk, Assassinated 35 Years Ago

“The only thing they have to look forward to is hope. And you have to give them hope. Hope for a better world, hope for a better tomorrow, hope for a better place to come to if the pressures at home are too great. Hope that all will be all right. Without hope, not only gays, but the blacks, the seniors, the handicapped, the us’es, the us’es will give up. And if you help elect to the central committee and other offices, more gay people, that gives a green light to all who feel disenfranchised, a green light to move forward. It means hope to a nation that has given up, because if a gay person makes it, the doors are open to everyone.

“So if there is a message I have to give, it is that if I’ve found one overriding thing about my personal election, it’s the fact that if a gay person can be elected, it’s a green light. And you and you and you, you have to give people hope….”

― Harvey Milk

Harvey Milk, the iconic LGBT activist who was assassinated in San Francisco 35 years ago today, delivered the above speech shortly before his murder. We are all the better for having been able to hear it.

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Milk, who was a Democrat, Jewish, was born in Woodmere, New York, and died at the age of just 48. A member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, Milk and Mayor George Moscone were assassinated by Dan White.

President Barack Obama posthumously awarded Harvey Milk the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009.

So much more can be, and has been, written.

Take a look at Daily Kos’ “A Meditation on the LGBT Rights Movement in Honor of Harvey Milk,” Good Reads’ “Harvey Milk Quotes,” the Harvey Milk Foundation, and “Nov. 27, 1978: San Francisco leaders George Moscone and Harvey Milk are murdered.”

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Here, some tributes to Harvey Milk, from around the world.

Image, top, via Wikipedia