Dan White

Dan White

Daniel James White was convicted of manslaughter rather than murder in the deaths of Harvey Milk and George Moscone. White served five years of a seven-year prison sentence. Less than two years after his release he returned to San Francisco, where he ultimately committed suicide.

About Dan White in brief

Summary Dan WhiteDaniel James White was convicted of manslaughter rather than murder in the deaths of Harvey Milk and George Moscone. White served five years of a seven-year prison sentence. Less than two years after his release he returned to San Francisco, where he ultimately committed suicide. White was born in Long Beach, California, the second of nine children. He attended Riordan High School until he was expelled for violence in his junior year. He went on to attend Woodrow Wilson High School where he was valedictorian of his class. He was a sergeant in the 101st Airborne Division in the Vietnam War from 1969 to 1970 and was honorably discharged in 1971. White worked as a security guard at A. J. Dimond High School in Anchorage, Alaska, in 1972. In 1977, White was elected as a Democrat to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors from District 8, which included several neighborhoods near the southeastern limits of San Francisco. As a supervisor, White saw himself as the board’s \”defender of the home, the family and religious life against homosexuals, pot smokers and cynics\”. Despite their personal differences, White and Supervisor Harvey Milk had several areas of political agreement and initially worked well together.

White held a mixed record on gay rights, opposing the Briggs Initiative, yet voting against an ordinance prohibiting discrimination against gays in housing and employment. On November 10, 1978, White resigned his seat as supervisor. The reasons he cited were his dissatisfaction with what he saw as the corrupt inner workings ofSan Francisco city politics, as well as the difficulty in making a living without a police officer’s or firefighter’s salary, jobs he could not retain legally while serving as a supervisor. White had opened a baked-potato stand at Pier 39, which failed to become profitable. He reversed his resignation on November 14,1978, after his supporters lobbied him to seek reappointment from GeorgeMoscone. He arrived at City Hall with the later-declared intention of killing Moscone and Milk, but also two other San Francisco politicians, California Assembly Speaker S. Willie Brown, and later S. F. Brown. White climbed through a window on the side of City Hall carrying a Smith & Wesson Model 36 38 caliber revolver and 10 rounds of ammunition.