'White Night' Riot
On May 21, 1979 
, San Franciscans marched to City Hall to protest the conviction of former Supervisor Dan White. White was found guilty of manslaughter for the assassinations of Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk the previous November. White's defense had successfully argued "diminished capacity": White's crimes were not premeditated, but the result of stress exacerbated by junk food.
Marchers protested the verdict because they felt it did not fit the crime—the assassinations of Moscone and Milk shocked the city and resonated across the nation. The sentiment was strong that the lighter sentence reflected anti-gay and anti-progressive prejudice. Milk had been the first openly gay city official, and Moscone had built his political career advocating for minorities and the poor. Moscone strongly supported gay rights.
Progressives had recently won close political races in San Francisco, and the tension between them and opponents was high. Dan White had been a conservative supervisor and had lost a political decision. He resented progressives' rise as his own career failed, and he blamed Moscone, Milk and others. He gunned down Moscone and Milk on Nov. 27, 1978.
Reaching City Hall , many protesters kept it peaceful, chanting, "Remember Harvey Milk!" and "We want Justice!" But some gave free rein to their anger and started wrecking fixtures and breaking glass. They set police cars ablaze. While radicals went wild, the crowd demanded "No more violence!"—but the melee got worse. Police arrived and got control after some time.
The '70s have a rap as being a decade of self-indulgence, of a lackluster political consciousness compared with the crazy '60s. But the "White Night" riots demonstrate that a movement for civil rights was fully underway, full of energy and with a quick activist response. Politics was still hotly contested between old power and new power. And the death toll of leaders, which had marked the 1960s in Dallas , Memphis and Los Angeles , was still a specter in public life.
