Of late, however, the bullhorn has been at the center of another type of dispute, one that pits its caretaker, Cleve Jones, a veteran organizer, against an elementary school that bears Mr. Milk’s name, and has some gay activists howling that Mr. Jones has absconded with a piece of their history.
For most of the last decade, the bullhorn — a Fanon Transistorized Megaphone, Model 8S-C — was locked in a dusty display cabinet at the Harvey Milk Civil Rights Academy, an alternative K-5 elementary school in the Castro neighborhood. It also did a recent star turn, however, playing itself in the 2008 film “Milk.”
Now, Mr. Jones, who was given the bullhorn by Mr. Milk shortly before he was murdered in 1978, says he is not so sure that the school is the right home for it, worrying aloud about its safety, its treatment and its relative obscurity in the school stairwell.
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Harvey Milk's Bullhorn
As reported in the New York Times, Harvey Milk's bullhorn, which was used to rally protesters in favor of gay and lesbian rights in the 1970s, has become a contested artifact. From the story:
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Cleve Jones decided not to return the bullhorn to the HM Academy. I sent the Academy a large print of my iconic image of Harvey, Taken on 6/7/77 Orange Tuesday that made that bullhorn famous, and introduced Harvey as an openly gay spokes- person 5 months before he was elected. To my knowledge and google image search, I could not find any other except for the recreation of the scene for the "Milk" movie. The scene in the movie with Milk in front of the Castro theater never happened. For the history of my image visit:
ReplyDeletewww.thecastro.net/street/memoriespage/pritikin/scene05.html