Harvey Milk

📍575 Castro Street, San Francisco, CA 94114, USA

“I grew up in Woodmere, on Long Island, in a Jewish family that ran a department store, and I kept my sexuality hidden for most of my early life — in the Navy, on Wall Street, in jobs and relationships where I could not be myself. In 1972 Scott Smith and I moved to San Francisco, and the next year we opened Castro Camera in a storefront at 575 Castro Street, in a working-class Irish neighbourhood that gay men were beginning to make their own. We lived in the apartment upstairs. The shop quickly became the Castro's unofficial city hall: people dropped in all day to talk about the latest news, problems and hopes, and its windows turned into a community noticeboard covered with announcements of marches, meetings and demonstrations. It was my headquarters for four campaigns for public office, and on the fourth, in 1977, I was elected to the city's Board of Supervisors, one of the first openly gay elected officials in the country. I always said you have to give people hope. The building is a city landmark, and a plaque marks it.”

Sources: Wikipedia: Castro Camera noehill.com hmdb.org