Rioters reach the steps of City Hall on May 21, 1979, the night of the White Night riots. This photo was taken by Jerry Pritikin, one of the photographers who will be featured in the special installation being unveiled at a ceremony 1 p.m. this Sunday at

The night of May 21, 1979, started like many a warm spring evening in San Francisco. I was sitting in the Church Street Station on the corner of Church and Market. Back then, most of the tables in the restaurant were booths, with great views of the passing humanity on Market Street. It was late afternoon; I was having an early dinner.
Suddenly a group of men streamed by outside the restaurant, pounding on windows. "He got away with murder! He got away with murder!" they shouted.

People in the restaurant jumped up, moaned, screamed. The Castro had been on edge as we awaited the jury verdict in the trail of Dan White, the former city cop, fire fighter and supervisor who had murdered Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone in cold blood in their offices at City Hall. It was a slam dunk case, but somehow, following the trial, it didn't feel like things were going the way they should.

We quickly learned the horrible details of the jury's verdict: White had been convicted on an extremely lesser charge of involuntary manslaughter. He would be out in a few short years. There would be no justice for the memory of Harvey Milk. His killer would go free after a brief stint behind bars.

In a short time, Castro Street was closed by an angry, stunned crowd gathering at the intersection at Market. The mood was in marked contrast to the candlelight march the night of the killings, when you could have virtually heard a pin drop on Market Street, as a hushed crowd of 40,000 marched from Castro to City Hall, in deep mourning.

The night of the verdict, sorrow gave way to anger. The crowd at Castro grew and spilled over to Market Street, and began the trek to City Hall. This time, people were rowdy and agitated.

The rest, as they say, is history - and brilliantly documented in the Academy Award winning film, The Times of Harvey Milk (you have to turn in your Homosexual Identity card if you haven't seen this film--it's essential viewing for every self-respecting queer to understand a vital piece of our history).

The crowd from the Castro was met with a large crowd from the Polk, which in the late 1970s was a thriving gay neighborhood and still the central location for a lot of gay celebrations, like Halloween. The mood quickly turned ugly as the crowds merged, and a pitched battle between the cops and the crowd began. The battle would last for the next several hours. Gay rioters started several small fires inside City Hall, smashed the windows, and torched dozens of police cars.

After hours of tolerating shouts from the crowd chanting "Dan White was a pig!" and fending off rocks and glass, the police were unleashed on the crowd. They swept through Civic Center in goose-step formation, black tape over their badges so they couldn’t be identified, savagely beating anyone they could catch.

Later that night a rogue group of cops bent on vengence swept into the Elephant Walk--a bar in the Castro that is now Harvey's--which was teeming with patrons. The cops trashed the bar and viciously clubbed everyone they could get to.

So, today, the plaza at Castro and Market where it all started has been named for Harvey Milk, and this year, 27 years after the riots, Supervisor Bevan Dufty is overseeing the installation of a series of Harvey Milk Photographic Tribute Plaques at the plaza this Sunday, on the anniversary. The plaques which depict the arc of Milk's life and political career are made of photographs fused into porcelain enamel and are comprised of 11 images by some of the era's photojournalists: Daniel Nicoletta, Efren Ramirez, Jerry Pritikin, Don Eckert, Mark Cohen, Leland Toy and Rink - who continues as a leading photojournalist in the community, and Bay Times’ primary photographer to this day.

The day after the riots, May 22, happened to be Milk's birthday. That night in 1979, Castro Street filled again, this time to celebrate the first birthday date since his assassination. I was one of the unlucky riot-goers who had been brutally beaten by a handful of cops in Civic Center the night before, so I recovered at home. The screams I had heard coming from the Castro the night before when the cops raided the Elephant Walk were replaced by the sounds of "Happy Birthday, Harvey."
This Sunday, Milk's nephew will be there for the unveiling, along with many of the photographers featured in the exhibit, Supervisor Dufty, and others at 1 p.m., to further the memory of the man who changed the face of gay history.