The Castro. San Francisco.
In the 1960’s San Francisco gained a reputation as a more tolerant city; Life magazine called it the “capital of gay America”.
At the same time, Haight-Ashbury’s Summer of Love was drawing counterculture crowds, but Gay men gravitated to the Castro for its Victorian homes and lower rents, shifting away from Polk Gulch.
By the 1970s, the Castro was an openly gay enclave.
Harvey Milk arrived in 1972 and opened the Castro Camera shop. He was known as the “Mayor of Castro Street ‘.
In 1977 he was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors — the first openly gay man elected to public office in California and one of the first in the U.S.
Tragedy struck on November 27, 1978, when San Francisco Supervisor Dan White assassinated Milk and Mayor George Moscone at City Hall.
White’s lenient manslaughter conviction (famously using a “Twinkie defense”) sparked the White Night Riots.
Today, The Castro remains historically and culturally significant as a symbol of the Gay Rights movement.
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