Ten years after the chorus first sang on the City Hall steps, it went back.
From Castro to City Hall
The Bay Area Reporter announced in mid-November 1988 that a candlelight march would mark ten years since the murders of Harvey Milk and George Moscone. It recalled that on the night of the killings more than 40,000 people had gathered at City Hall, and that the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus sang in public that night for the first time. Joan Baez and the chorus would sing again.
On November 27, the BAR’s Dennis McMillan reported, about 25,000 people marched from the Castro to City Hall, the largest crowd since the first march. They included Mayor Art Agnos, Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, Representatives George Miller and Nancy Pelosi and the Moscone family. A cable car carried people with AIDS.
“From the Silence”
The chorus marched to the stage and sang “San Francisco” and “From the Silence,” with words by charter member Gerald Pearson, who had died of AIDS. McMillan wrote that the unaccompanied lyrics rang across Civic Center. Baez sang too, as she had in 1978. Agnos asked marchers to put their candles in their windows that Thursday, the first World AIDS Day.
“No more will we hush our singing.”
— Gerald Pearson, “From the Silence,” as quoted by the Bay Area Reporter
From the archives: this post retells reporting by the Bay Area Reporter. The original articles survive only in newspaper archives, so we have told the story here in our own words. Details attributed to those outlets are their reporting; see the sources below.
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