The Assassination of Harvey Milk | In the Shadows | 1

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It's the morning of Monday, November 27th, 1978, in the Cayuga Terrace neighborhood of San Francisco.

Inside his family home on Shawnee Avenue, 32-year-old Dan White is alone.

His wife has gone to work, taking their young son to daycare on the way.

But Dan won't be sitting around the empty house all day, just waiting for his family to return.

No, he's an elected official, so he's got to get to City Hall.

There's a job to do.

He picks up the phone in the kitchen and calls his aide.

It's a quick conversation.

Dan asks her to come pick him up and give him a ride to work.

Once that's done, Dan heads into the bedroom.

He's already mostly dressed, but he finishes doing the top few buttons on his shirt and knots his tie.

He grabs a vest and slips it on, carefully adjusting everything so that it looks just right.

The matching suit jacket is almost the final touch to the outfit, but before he leaves, there's one last thing he needs to add to the ensemble.

Dan heads down to the basement and turns on the light.

Going to a closet in the corner of the room, he reaches up to the top shelf and wraps his hand around his 38 Smith & Wesson Chief Special.

He pulls the gun out of its holster and checks the chamber.

There are five bullets there already, but Dan wants more.

He knows he'll need them.

He gropes around on the shelf for a second until he finds a small box.

Opening the lid, Dan holds the box closer to the light so he can see better while he counts out ten hollow point bullets, the kind that explode on impact.

Dan wraps the bullets in his handkerchief and tucks them inside his jacket pocket for safekeeping.

Then he straps the holster around his waist and tucks it up underneath the vest.

Now he's ready.

With that, Dan White heads back upstairs and checks his watch.

There's still a few minutes until his aid is due to arrive.

So he sits down on the couch in the living room to wait for his ride to City Hall.

From Airship, I'm Jeremy Schwartz, and this is American Criminal.

In November of 1978, the United States was rocked by a series of jaw-dropping headlines out of San Francisco.

First came the news that a cult, that until recently had called the city home, had taken part in a mass suicide and murder in the jungle of Guyana.

Over 900 members died, leaving people around the world asking what on earth happened.

In Northern California, though, the questions were more incisive.

Jim Jones, the leader of the People's Temple, had wrapped himself up in the political machinations of San Francisco, and his followers had even helped some city officials get elected.

As details of the tragedy trickled out, the discourse became more pointed, more accusatory.

Who would take the blame for Jonestown?

But then, just as people were coming to terms with the scale of what had happened in Guyana, a pair of assassinations rocked San Francisco all over again.

Dan White, a straight-laced father, former policeman and elected official, brought a pistol to City Hall and shot Mayor George Moscone and supervisor Harvey Milk, one of the first openly gay people elected to office in the nation.

In the aftermath of the crime, San Francisco's gay community felt like they'd been dealt a mortal blow.

That their most prominent figure could be so coldly gone down in the halls of government seemed like an ominous sign for what lay ahead for the gay rights movement.

Just like after Jonestown, people had questions in the aftermath of Harvey's murder.

And despite appearances, there were no easy answers.

Everyone knew who the assassin was.

Everyone was pretty sure they knew on some level why he did it.

But still, just hours after the assassination, graffiti appeared in the city's gay heartland.

It was a simple question with one long complex answer.

Who killed Harvey Milk?

This is episode one in our five part series on the Assassination of Harvey Milk.

In the shadows.

It's the late 1930s in the Rockaways, New York.

The Peninsula neighborhood is where a preteen Harvey Milk and his older brother Robert come sometimes to listen to matinee broadcasts of The Lone Ranger.

The theater is around five miles from their home in Woodmere, but the journey's more than worth the effort for Harvey.

Sitting in the dark, he can hardly concentrate on the radio drama playing through the speakers at the front of the room.

The show is fun, but what he's looking forward to is the raffle.

Everyone's ticket stubs go into a barrel, and a few lucky winners will be chosen to receive a prize.

Those people, the ones whose numbers are called out, get to go up on stage and collect their winnings.

That's the part that Harvey's really here for.

It only happened to him once or twice before, but every week the possibility of winning again fills the kid with a tingling rush.

He loved getting to jump out of his seat and run up on the stage, into the bright spotlight, and wave at the applauding audience.

It was a thrill unlike anything he'd ever experienced.

So when he and Robert are allowed to come to a matinee, the raffle is all Harvey can think about.

Ever since he was really little, Harvey's liked being the center of attention, something he didn't seem to inherit from either of his middle class parents.

Other traits he did pick up though.

Bill and Minnie Milk are both civic minded people.

During the Great War, they each enlisted in the Navy.

Bill on a submarine crew, Minnie is a Yomunet, the first women's branch in the Navy.

In particular, Minnie is a strong proponent of the Jewish principle of Tikkun Olam or fixing the world, which to her means working to help others.

She's less devout than her husband is, but the tenet of helping others has always spoken to Minnie.

Her youngest son will follow in her footsteps.

Like Minnie, Harvey's got a quick wit and a love of the arts.

On Saturday afternoons, the Milks gather in their living room to listen to live broadcasts from New York's Metropolitan Opera House.

Even at home, Harvey can't resist a chance to at least pretend he's the one on display.

While his parents and brothers sit listening quietly, Harvey stands before the fireplace, imagining that the hearth is his stage.

He waves his arms in front of him conducting an unseen orchestra with a pencil.

That love of the opera will continue and deepen as Harvey gets older.

In 1944, when Harvey's 14, he decides that listening to performances on the radio isn't enough.

He wants to be there to experience the spectacle in person.

So he convinces his mother to let him catch the train the 25 miles into Manhattan to visit the Met itself.

Minnie's proud of her son's growing passion for the arts, and she boasts to friends and neighbors about Harvey's cultural interests.

But then she gets a little worried.

Whether she senses that there's something different about her son, or she's just spooked by things she's heard about Manhattan, she sits Harvey down before his first excursion to give him a warning.

New York City isn't like Woodmere, she says.

It's more dangerous.

All sorts of people live there, all sorts of men, deviant men.

These homosexuals, as she calls them, like to wait at the train depot watching out for young boys.

She doesn't specify what it is these men do to the boys, but the conversation puts Harvey on edge all the same.

But not because he's suddenly scared of other men.

It's more that he's scared of himself.

By this stage, Harvey's well aware that he's not quite like most of the boys his age.

He's always felt himself drawn to other boys and men instead of becoming interested in girls like his older brother.

Minnie's warning about the dangers of the men in New York makes Harvey wary about the feelings he's having.

The way his mom talked about it, it was clear that whatever these men do with each other, it's wrong.

But even that can't dull Harvey's excitement for his first visit to the opera.

What he and his mother don't realize is that the Met's standing section is kinda notorious for being a cruising spot for Manhattan's gay community.

At a time when homosexuality is illegal and spoken about in whispers, gay men have to get creative when it comes to finding others for trysts.

The Saturday opera is a favorite for many of them.

So despite going in with pure intentions and his mother's words echoing in his head, Harvey can't fight his urges for long.

After his first visit, trips to the opera become a regular weekend outing for him.

And in the darkness, his hormones are more compelling than society's puritanical restrictions.

Harvey has his first few sexual encounters there in the darkened theater.

Sometimes he even meets up with men afterwards for more than the usual quick fumble.

Harvey's in high school when he launches into this new phase of his life.

He's an average student but a decent athlete.

He makes the junior varsity team for football, plays basketball, runs track and wrestles.

That's helped keep him somewhat popular at school and as he gets older, his athletic figure attracts Harvey plenty of attention when he's cruising at the Met.

But before long, he wants to expand his horizons and starts asking about where else he might go for more action.

Soon, he starts visiting certain areas of Central Park during his weekend visits to the city where men watch and wait for other guys to signal that they're interested.

Unfortunately, although Harvey's enjoying exploring his sexuality, it comes with a price.

His mother's words are always in the back of his mind.

From the day he has his first sexual experience with a man, Harvey can't help feeling like he'll never have a home in his parents' house again.

Not really.

He'll still live there, but he knows he'll never be able to tell them who he is.

Early on, Harvey seeks out a rabbi to talk over his feelings of isolation from his family.

Ever since he was 12, Harvey's thought all religion was phony.

He had his Bar Mitzvah at 13, but for him, his Jewishness is cultural more than spiritual.

Still, when he needs advice, he turns to the synagogue.

The rabbi listens to Harvey as he talks about his attraction to men, about the disapproval he fears from many.

He worries that who he is makes him a bad person.

But the rabbi offers Harvey some advice.

He tells him that he shouldn't be concerned about how he's living his life, as long as he feels he's living it right.

The rabbi can see that Harvey is a good kid.

Why else would he be asking like this?

It's a comforting thought, one Harvey will hold on to.

In the summer of 1945, the milks move from Woodmere about 30 miles east to Bayshore.

The change of scenery makes things inconvenient for Harvey, adding an extra hour to his trips into Manhattan.

But their arrival at the seaside hamlet coincides nicely with the rising popularity of Fire Island as a gay vacation destination just off the coast.

People visiting the island catch a ferry from the pier in Bayshore, which means there's a near constant parade of gay men passing through town.

Once Harvey figures that out, he follows them out to the island, where cruising for sex is much easier than it is in Manhattan.

But it's not all about satisfying his carnal desires.

Sometimes Harvey just wants to hang out with other people like him, to feel a sense of community, of belonging.

It's not always been easy to find that in either of his hometowns.

At his high school, Harvey's big nose attracts plenty of snarky comments in the hallways.

And for a young Jewish man who's come of age during World War II, jokes about his appearance can feel especially pointed.

Harvey's first line of defense is a sense of humor.

He's always got a witty comeback for anyone who tries to make fun of his appearance.

That helps him seem more like a class clown than an easy target, but it doesn't make him feel any more comfortable among his peers.

Through it all, Harvey's got this nagging feeling that things will be different.

Better even, once he gets away from home.

He loves his mom, even if he suspects she'd be disappointed to find out he's gay.

His relationship with his dad, though, isn't great.

Like his father before him, Bill's a combative guy, and he's prone to outbursts and tantrums.

It's something he's passed on to his son.

They're both stubborn, each digging their heels in over even the smallest of disagreements.

So, as with many teenagers before him, Harvey dreams of getting some space from his family.

As Harvey gets older and freedom gets even closer, he starts growing more and more impatient.

Finally, around the time he turns 16, he decides that he can't wait any longer.

That's when he makes up his mind to graduate a year early.

He's never been the best student, but he's a goal-oriented person.

So having a mission helps him overcome his academic shortcomings.

In May of 1947, just days before his 17th birthday, Harvey graduates high school 12 months ahead of the rest of his class.

And when he's handed his diploma, it feels to Harvey like he's being handed the key to an entire new world.

From here, there's no limit to where he can go, what he can do.

Now that he's a man, it's time for Harvey Milk's life to really begin.

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It's August 1947, a perfect summer's day in New York Central Park.

It seems like all of Manhattan is out making the most of the weather.

17-year-old Harvey Milk is among them.

But he's not here for entirely wholesome reasons.

Harvey is in an area of the park that's popular with gay men looking to meet others.

Some of them are interested in friends or even dates, but plenty of these guys are looking for sex.

So, a lot of them have taken off their shirts, hoping it will act like a kind of signal to others on the prowl.

This isn't Harvey's first rodeo.

He knows all about cruising the park by now.

And after years of playing multiple sports in high school, he's always eager to show off his body.

Finding a clear space on the grass, he unbuttons his shirt and sits, propping himself up on his elbows so he can keep an eye out for anyone who looks appetizing.

Unfortunately for Harvey, he's not the only one familiar with the city's popular gay hookup spots.

The NYPD are well aware of what goes on in Central Park, and they don't want it happening on their watch.

So soon after Harvey settles down for the afternoon, he hears the blast of a police whistle.

Before he's figured out what's going on, there's a hand wrapped tightly around his arm and a cop yanking him up to his feet.

In the space of just a couple of minutes, Harvey's being hustled towards a fleet of waiting police vans on the edge of the park.

When he asks what he's being arrested for, he's told it's for indecent exposure.

It's mortifying for Harvey.

He can feel the eyes of hundreds of New Yorkers on him as he's shoved through the park by aggressive cops.

Once he's in the van on his way to jail, Harvey makes up his mind about what he has to do.

Harvey avoids spending the night in jail by playing dumb.

He tells the cops that he had no idea that the park was a cruising spot for gay men.

He's just a high school kid who was looking to get a tan, honest.

The story saves Harvey the shame of having to explain anything to his parents, though not everyone the police arrested that day can say the same thing.

Plenty of them spend at least a night in lockup.

But for the most part, gay men targeted by the police and roundups like this aren't charged with anything.

It's too much paperwork apart from anything else.

Mostly, the cops are doing it to frighten the community, to stop them from gathering.

Harvey doesn't know that, not yet, but the experience is a terrifying and formative one, all the same.

Just weeks after his brief arrest in Manhattan, Harvey starts classes at New York State College for teachers in Albany, and he's disappointed in what he finds there.

Thanks to the war, there are very few men in the junior and senior classes.

That means that women occupy most of the positions of leadership in the student body.

There's basically no athletic program for men, and almost all of the fraternities have been closed for years.

For Harvey, who's desperate to conceal his sexuality, this is unacceptable.

He needs to surround himself with as much masculine energy as possible, so that no one suspects his true nature.

He desperately wants to be seen as just one of the guys.

So he joins one of the few surviving fraternities on campus, Kappa Beta, a Jewish group that was founded in a time when no frat would admit Jews.

This way, he'll have baked-in guy friends around him at all times.

No one will accuse him of being soft if he's always surrounded by men.

And just to make sure nobody gets the wrong idea, Harvey wears athletic sweats basically every day.

He won't let people forget that he's a jock.

Nothing gay to see here.

With that taken care of, Harvey sets about filling up his time.

Like in high school, he only gets average grades, but he's great at extracurriculars.

He covers sports for the college paper, which solidifies his macho credentials.

But he also takes time to pontificate a little when the urge strikes.

First, it's about the culture of hazing and fraternities, which Harvey hates.

From there, he writes about anything that he capital B believes in.

He thinks that the student body doesn't display enough school spirit, so he writes a column about it.

They don't attend enough of the college sporting events, he says.

They need to support their community.

Not for the last time, Harvey's displaying an unwavering instinct that he knows what's best for people, and a determination to push his agenda.

At this stage of his life, Harvey's beliefs are a mixed bag.

He's certainly not a feminist, but he hates most kinds of discrimination.

And in one column, he praises a campus sorority for ignoring its own organizational bylaws and welcoming a black student into its membership.

Soon enough, though, Harvey's not just writing about issues, he's campaigning on them.

He runs for class president in his freshman year, but he finishes fourth in a field of five.

Undeterred, he also runs for treasurer of the Athletic Association.

He doesn't get enough votes for that either.

Neither setback batters Harvey's ego too much, though.

And by his senior year, he's ready to go after a position he really wants.

Miscania is a secretive society on campus that, among other things, plays a role in representing the student body before the administration.

Members are chosen by outgoing seniors, and Harvey desperately wants to be one of the lucky few.

To be tapped for Miscania would be confirmation that he's one of the civic, moral, and intellectual leaders on campus.

Plus, there's a ceremony where new members are plucked from the crowd and take their place on stage before everyone.

It couldn't be more perfect for Harvey.

But the day of the ceremony comes, and Harvey's not one of the chosen few.

He has to stand in the crowd while others are plucked from relative obscurity and pulled into the spotlight.

Losing out again is disappointing for Harvey, and the blows keep coming.

In the fall of 1950, his senior year, a group of his fellow columnists at the school paper write an article predicting who will be voted onto the homecoming court that semester.

Their choice for homecoming queen is Harvey, who they rechristen Harriet.

They name four other young men as homecoming princesses, but Harvey's the main target of the article.

And after all he'd done to try and come off as a man's man, it seems it didn't work.

Well, maybe something else will.

After Harvey graduates in 1951, he feels a burst of patriotic duty and, like both of his parents before him, enlists in the Navy.

If nothing else, he's hoping that it will give him some sort of direction.

Even after four years of college, he's not sure what he wants to do with his life.

But it seems like everyone's heading to Korea, so he figures he'll do the same.

Early on, Harvey's singled out for his athletic abilities.

After being sent to the officer's candidate school, he trains as a deep-sea diver and is initially sent to patrol the North Korean coast aboard a submarine rescue ship.

Then, after his tour of duty, Harvey's stationed in San Diego, where he's chief petty officer of the USS Kitty Wake.

Later, Harvey will tell people that he was only promoted because he coached the ship's wrestling team to a championship win.

Whether that's the case or not, Harvey's position affords him the freedom to rent his own apartment off base.

And with so many sailors stationed in and visiting the city, San Diego offers Harvey plenty of opportunities for......extracurricular activities with some of his fellow sailors.

He's far from the only gay man in the Navy, though.

In fact, the abundance of queer sailors in San Diego helps gay bars and businesses thrive in the city.

Sailors on leave cruise the gay-friendly haunts, eager to connect after lifetimes of relative isolation.

Then, some four years after he first signed up, Harvey's time in the Navy comes to an end.

In a couple of decades, he'll start telling people that he was dishonorably discharged for being gay.

But the truth is that he's a decorated sailor who's reached the rank of Lieutenant Junior Grade and earned several medals.

He receives an honorable discharge in early 1955, and suddenly at the age of 25, has to decide what to do with his life again.

After a year or so in Los Angeles and Miami, falling in and out of love with his first boyfriend, Harvey ends up back in New York.

With nothing else to do, he makes use of his credentials from the Teachers College and gets a job teaching math and history to high schoolers.

When he's not in the classroom, Harvey's looking for love, and he's already got a distinct type.

He tends to gravitate to fit men who were younger than he is and who could use taking care of, guidance or just a roof over their heads.

With a slim frame and dark hair, 19-year-old Joe Camel fits the bill perfectly.

Harvey's great at the early stage of a relationship.

He writes Joe love letters, sends him flowers and makes wake up phone calls to his apartment for the first couple of weeks they're dating.

He takes Joe to the ballet and the opera, buys him gifts.

After just a few weeks, Joe's moving into Harvey's apartment in Queens and they're starting their life together.

But Harvey's a pretty restless guy.

By the summer of 1957, he's already over the whole teaching thing.

He briefly moves himself and Joe to Dallas, but finds it almost impossible to get work there as a Jewish man and despairs at the lack of decent culture.

They don't last long in Texas, and when they get back to New York, Harvey scores himself a job as an actuarial statistician at an insurance company.

It's a solid gig that pays him 140 bucks a week, which is about 50 percent above the average income for 1958.

Joe, who guilds furniture for a living, brings in about 90 bucks a week.

With their combined income, they run a nice apartment across the street from Central Park.

Things between Harvey and Joe are solid for a few years.

They meet each other's families, and although Harvey never introduces Joe to his parents as his partner, Minnie knits the matching afghans, suddenly signaling that she knows what's up.

So for a while, Harvey and Joe have a happy life together.

But slowly, the passion burns out between them.

Harvey loves the stability Joe offers him, but he also wants excitement, which they just don't have.

By the early 60s, Harvey's getting bored.

At home and at work.

Something's gotta give, and the day it does, it's his relationship that gets the chop.

One afternoon, Harvey walks into the living room where Joe's getting some ironing done.

Harvey tells him that he should probably think about moving out.

A few weeks later, in September 1961, Harvey's alone in the apartment, regretting his decision.

But Joe's not interested in coming back, even when Harvey sends him pleading love letters.

Joe knows his ex is just being dramatic.

He's a big boy, he'll move on soon enough.

He just needs to find a new object for his affection.

Joe's instincts will prove correct.

In time, Harvey will find a way to get over the seven years he spent with Joe Campbell.

And eventually, he'll discover a passion that will make him an icon in his community.

In the meantime, though, a string of lovers will each shape Harvey Milk into the man he's destined to become.

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It's late 1962 in New York City, and 32-year-old Harvey Milk is walking along Central Park West, looking for a man to take home for the night.

It's been a couple of months since his ex-partner Joe Campbell moved out, and Harvey's heart's still broken.

But the rest of him has needs.

And when he lays eyes on 22-year-old Craig Rodwell, he knows he's found a perfect match.

With the live, muscled body of a dancer and a childhood without a strong father figure, Craig's exactly the kind of guy Harvey's drawn to.

On the surface, at least.

But Craig's got some radical ideas that Harvey finds hard to take.

Craig was sexually precocious as a kid, and after years of experimentation in all-boys schools, he spent most of his teenage years in his hometown of Chicago having sex with men he met outside of gay bars.

Now, having had plenty of run-ins with bigoted cops and neighbors, Craig's got a strong sense of identity and an activist mindset when it comes to the gay community.

In Harvey, he sees a successful man and a comfortable job, with a great apartment in the most exciting city in the world.

And yet, he's still not open about who he really is.

Craig believes Harvey should come out of the closet.

Harvey believes that will kill his parents.

They argue about it all the time.

Craig pushing Harvey's buttons.

And Harvey always ending the argument by telling Craig that he's too young, too naïve to know what he's talking about.

And in some ways, he's got a point.

Harvey lived through the prime lavender scare years of the early 1950s, when being gay was enough to lose people their jobs and homes to say nothing of their families.

Senator Joseph McCarthy had made hay out of people's fears of communism and gayness, leading to public hearings that ruin people's lives.

So it's understandable that Harvey is wary of being open with his sexuality.

Meanwhile, a full ten years younger than Harvey, Craig's so militant in his ideas that he drops leaflets about gay organizations into the mailboxes of apartments that bear the names of two men.

He figures at least some of those guys are gay couples, and that whatever their excuses, it's time for them to come out and stand with their community.

In the end, the relationship fizzles out when Craig's arrested at a known gay cruising area of a park and is thrown in jail for three days.

Harvey can't handle the thought of being associated with someone so openly, so defiantly gay.

He eventually stops calling Craig.

He's just too much trouble, Harvey thinks.

But Craig's ideas will stick with him for years.

In early 1963, Harvey can't stand the stifling boredom of his job anymore.

With his 33rd birthday looming, he picks up his paycheck one morning, takes an early lunch, and never goes back to the office.

Then he boxes up his things and gets out of New York.

The next six months or so get more and more stressful for Harvey as he tries out potential new homes.

First, he goes to Puerto Rico, where he discovers that his inability to speak Spanish makes him useless to just about every employer.

He doesn't fare any better in Miami, though he writes to a friend that the problem in Florida is that he's Jewish.

And while the area does have a history of anti-Semitism, by the time Harvey arrives, the Jewish population is growing and thriving in Miami Beach.

So it's possible he's just striking out for other reasons.

Finally, Harvey returns to New York in the back half of 63.

With his money running out, he knows he has to swallow his pride and go back to another boring office job.

Soon enough, he lands himself a gig as a researcher at a Wall Street investment firm, which pays pretty well.

He gets another apartment on the Upper West Side, buys himself some nice suits, and splurges on good seats at the opera.

As Harvey moves up in the ranks at the firm, his paychecks start getting bigger and he splashes out on tickets to the ballet, dinners at the Russian Tea Room, and nights out on Broadway.

Watching how Harvey is spending his money, a friend suggests that he buy himself a house, help shore up his financial security while he's bringing in good money.

But Harvey brushes off the advice, saying that he won't live long enough to make use of whatever he puts away now.

This isn't the first time Harvey said this kind of thing.

He's made many offhand comments predicting an early death.

He doesn't get specific, but he tells people to mark his words.

Harvey Milk will be dead by 50.

While he's around though, Harvey's determined to enjoy the life he's got.

In 1964, around the same time Harvey's settling into his new job, he takes up with Jack McKinley, a 16-year-old kid fresh off the bus from Hagerstown, Maryland.

When they meet, Jack's already living with another older gay man, but is wooed by Harvey's love notes and flowers, and pretty quickly, he moves in with 33-year-old Harvey.

Today, an age gap like that is problematic, at best.

But having left his Christian fundamentalist family behind, Jack needs someone to take care of him in the big city.

Harvey is only too happy to fill that role.

But the guy Jack was living with before Harvey came along, the three of them stay friends.

Tom O'Horgan is a performer who starts producing experimental plays out of his loft and at the LaMama Theatre Company.

Jack displays a talent for the technical side of theatre and learns all about stage managing by working with Tom.

And Harvey, with his lifelong love of the arts, is only too happy to help fund Tom's increasingly grand visions.

So, for the next few years, Harvey spends his time raking in money, doting on young Jack and scratching his artistic itch.

But eventually, inevitably, things start going stale.

Harvey and Jack drift apart and start sleeping together less and less.

This being the 60s, Jack gets into a lot of the drugs that are growing in popularity and starts sleeping with other men.

But Harvey's got plenty to distract him from his crumbling relationship.

Tom has turned out to be a musical theater genius who rescued a fledgling rock musical called Hair and ushered it to Broadway glory.

Now, Harvey's living in Greenwich Village, surrounded by plenty of the city's gay men and rubbing shoulders with hippies.

He's even grown his hair long.

Looking around him, Harvey can't help feeling disappointed in the way his life's turned out.

Sure, he's earning good money and he's getting more involved in the art scene, but when he sees people like Tom, who's been nominated for a Tony, everything Harvey's achieved seems so meaningless.

Even Jack seems destined for greatness.

In 1969, he's tapped to be the stage director for the San Francisco production of Hair.

Harvey's already quit his job by this time.

Five years at one company has been more than enough.

So, with nothing tying him down and his young lover heading west, Harvey packs up his belongings and tags along for the ride.

It's a move that will change Harvey's life and the history of the gay movement forever.

From Airship, this is episode one in our series on the assassination of Harvey Milk.

On the next episode, Harvey's new life in San Francisco inspires him to run for office.

But the fight will be much harder than he expects.

And we use many different sources while preparing this episode.

A couple we can recommend are Harvey Milk, His Lives and Death by Lillian Faderman, and The Mayor of Castro Street by Randy Schiltz.

This episode may contain reenactments or dramatized details.

And while in some cases we can't know exactly what happened, all our dramatizations are based on historical research.

American Criminal is hosted, edited, and executive produced by me, Jeremy Schwartz.

Audio editing by Christian Peraga.

Sound design by Matthew Feller.

Music by Throm.

This episode is written and researched by Joel Callan, managing producer, Emily Burke.

Executive producers are Joel Callan, William Simpson and Lindsey Graham.