50 years in 50 weeks: 2020: Milk's naval records
The February 13, 2020 issue of the Bay Area Reporter examined a trove of naval records that showed Harvey Milk, the late gay civil rights leader and San Francisco supervisor, was given an "other than honorable discharge" from the U.S.
Navy and forced to resign in 1955 rather than face a court-martial because of his homosexuality. The records called into question the veracity of an archival document at the San Francisco Public Library's History Center that authors of several recent biographies of Milk used to claim he was honorably discharged from the Navy.
The B.A.R. received 152 pages released by the Naval Personnel Command that showed Milk was forced to describe in precise detail the gay sex he engaged in with a number of men in the early 1950s while living in San Diego.
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