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Frank both challenged and fostered our work. He made plain in no uncertain terms that he would not talk about Harvey Milk in a restaurant over lunch. So instead he welcomed us into his home, opened to us his files in the upstairs den, let us spread out materials in his kitchen, and sat for a long interview in his living room. Memory, of course, is both pleasure and pain, and we know Frank’s conjuring of Harvey Milk was not always easy, more evidence of Frank’s generosity of spirit. And what a storyteller Frank is: how lucky we were to be the beneficiaries. Then, when the day’s research was done, Frank looked at us, smiled, and said, “Now you may take me to dinner.” And dine we did, once at the historic Hotel Whitcomb’s Market Street Café, one of his favorite spots.

      Numerous others, in plentiful ways, materially and affectively, made our research and writing of this book possible, easier, pleasurable, better. The University of Alabama and Boston College offered financial support of our San Francisco trips through multiple grants.

      At the James C. Hormel Gay and Lesbian Center in the San Francisco Public Library, Tim Wilson and Susan Goldstein warmly and enthusiastically endorsed and supported us and this project, and provided all the resources and expertise we needed and could have hoped for. Our many wonderful encounters with Tim in the reading room of the San Francisco History Center of the SFPL made us feel at home among friends, and when we returned in 2009, two years after our initial trip, the three of us fell right back into step.

      For research and copyright assistance, we offer our thanks to Heather Cassell and Karen Sundheim at Hormel, Rebekah Kim and Daniel Bao at the GLBT Historical Society, Cynthia Laird at the Bay Area Reporter, Walter Caplan, David Lamble, Tom Spitz at KPIX/KBCW, Alex Cherian at the San Francisco Bay Area TV Archive, Ken Liss at O’Neill Library at Boston College, and Patrick Shannon at the Bancroft Library of UC Berkeley. Our research assistants, Benjamin Kimmerle and Gyromas Newman, handled many of our transcription assignments with good humor and good work.

      San Francisco visits came with the warmest of welcomes and hospitality from friends and colleagues Gust Yep, John Elia, Ralph Smith and Russel Windes, Dan Saffer, Rink Foto, Jeff Sens, Jack Keatings and Tom Booth at Hotel Frank/Maxwell, and the staff at Harvey’s.

      At University of California Press, Kim Robinson’s patience, counsel, and encouragement guided us through project vision and revision en route to a remarkably better book than the manuscript we submitted, for which we are so thankful. And we thank, too, Stacy Eisenstark for all her help during the production process.

      Jason: This project, one borne from a mutual admiration of Harvey’s story, has resulted in much more than the glorious fruits of an archival journey. For me, An Archive of Hope has also fostered a lifelong friendship—a story unto itself. Throughout the past seven years—from San Francisco visits and Castro meanderings to writing sessions on a Boston rooftop and planning sessions on a Tuscaloosa riverboat—I have found a brother in Chuck Morris. I want to wholeheartedly thank Chuck for enlivening our work, for teaching me the nuances of queer worldmaking, and for supporting me when I needed it the most. An Archive of Hope would never have been realized and completed without his care and determination. I am genuinely honored and fortunate to consider Chuck a part of my family.

      I would also like to express appreciation to my friends at The University of Alabama for all of their encouragement on this project. I am particularly indebted to Adam Sharples and Meredith Bagley for sharing their knowledge about LGBTQ memory and their mutual love for Harvey; to Beth S. Bennett, my good friend and mentor, for supporting An Archive of Hope every step of the way; to students in my undergraduate and graduate seminars for the many productive conversations about Harvey and the “hope trope”; and to my colleagues in the College of Communication & Information Sciences for their willingness to entertain my musings about and ardor for Harvey’s story.

      Finally, I am grateful to have a moment to thank my partner Jennifer Black and daughters Anabelle and Amelia for all of their love. I am blessed (and awed) by their understanding and patience—both related to this project and always. This anthology has been a part of our lives for the better part of a decade. My wish is that Harvey’s name and words will remain constantly with us as a reminder of the possibilities of love and the resonance of hope.

      Chuck: I beamed late one evening in 2006 when I read an email from Jason Black inviting me to consider collaborating with him on a Harvey Milk project. The idea excited me at that moment, but it would be our unfolding friendship that most enriched and sustained me as that idea transformed into this book. I now feel as if I’ve known Jason my whole life, and he’s become indigenous to my world, for which I am enormously grateful and deeply happy.

      During this project I lost two of my sweetest inspirations, Alex and Augustine, whose love and curiosity meant so much to me, and whose spirits still fill me.

      Among the living, my friends make daily work and life richly rewarding, and for their laughter and comfort and wisdom I thank Dale, Dan, Rob, Tom, Andrew, David, Mary Kate, Chuck and Ginny, Jackie, Shea, Katie, Andrew, Austin, Vanessa, Karma and Sara, Jeff and Isaac, Kendall, Erin, Lance, Bob, Pam, Bonnie, John, Keith and Bob, the Boston Rhetoric Reading Group, and all my field and Facebook pals.

      Finally, I dedicate my effort here to my partner Scott Rose, my Gatto, for giving the deepest meaning and feeling to living and loving and intervening in the GLBTQ world, and to our boys, Jackson and Cooper, with all my heart.

      FOREWORD

      Harvey

      FRANK M. ROBINSON

      Harvey Milk was one of the most significant of the American political figures of the twentieth century. He started as a Goldwater Republican and ended his life as the last of the store-front politicians—those who ran for public office with no money, their stores their campaign headquarters, and their following largely those who stopped in to buy something and stayed to talk politics with the owner.

      An “openly gay man,” as the newspapers of the time referred to Harvey, his constituency was the largely closeted gay population of San Francisco. Harvey was anything but—he was openly gay not only in the gay enclave of the Castro, but to the world at large.

      He was to become the first gay man to win a major political office in the United States—despite the fact that gays were the last important group in the country who were subject to nationally approved prejudice. Tolerance was the most that a gay man could expect—acceptance was seldom granted.

      In the city of San Francisco, the gay community was represented by politicians who were the “friends of gays” but never gay themselves.

      It was Harvey’s unique idea that gays should be represented by one of their own. The black community was represented by black politicians—they could hardly change the color of their skin. But gays had the option of hiding, and that was the course that most of them took. You could vote anonymously at the ballot box, but to acknowledge your homosexuality to the world at large could be extremely risky when it came to family, friends, or employment. It might be okay for Harvey to be openly gay, but it wasn’t okay for most gays, and sometimes it could be physically dangerous.

      Harvey was out to change all that. He turned his shop into a place for voter registration and urged all gays to “come out”—saying that people would never change their viewpoint on homosexuality unless they had actually met some homosexuals. Families might view their “single” aunts and uncles with suspicion, but as long as gay people “hid,” they were tolerated.

      By the time Harvey was elected to office as a San Francisco supervisor, those who suffered from the “love that dare not speak its name” had learned to shout.

      Harvey was martyred after less than a year in office. His funeral procession led from 17th and Castro to City Hall and numbered 40,000. He was honored with a play produced locally; a biography, The Mayor of Castro Street by Randy Shilts, who wrote it for an advance of ten grand, peanuts in the publishing business; a successful television documentary, The Times of Harvey Milk (currently available on DVD); an opera that played in Houston, New York, and San Francisco; and a movie starring Sean Penn (he won an Oscar for it) with a screenplay by Dustin Lance Black (who also won an Oscar and gave an acceptance speech that earned him a standing ovation). After that, the

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