On November 27, 1978, former Supervisor Dan White shot and killed Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk at San Francisco City Hall. The New York Times reported the next day that about 25,000 people gathered outside City Hall that night. What began as a march by the city’s gay community grew into a citywide expression of grief.
A hymn on the steps
The chorus was only a few weeks old. It had been rehearsing for a Christmas debut, but that night its founder, Jon Sims, taught the men a hymn, and they walked to City Hall to sing it. Later accounts in the Bay Area Reporter describe mourners hearing a Mendelssohn hymn from a group of men on the City Hall steps. It was the first time the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus sang in public.
Original member Bob Bercaw told The New York Times in 1988 that the vigil felt like a call to the chorus to help lift the community. Ten years later, the BAR noted that the chorus had made its first appearance on the same date it returned to City Hall to mark the anniversary.
“The San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus sang that night for the first time in public.”
— Bay Area Reporter, November 17, 1988
From the archives: this post retells reporting by The New York Times, the San Francisco Examiner and 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.
Sources
- The New York Times, “2 Deaths Mourned by San Franciscans” by Les Ledbetter, November 29, 1978. nytimes.com
- San Francisco Examiner, “In memoriam (photo page)”, November 27, 1978. sfexaminer.com
- Bay Area Reporter, “Nov. 27 Candlelight March to Commemorate Life and Death of First Openly Gay Supervisor”, November 17, 1988. ebar.com
- Bay Area Reporter, “Making harmony: The SF Gay Men’s Chorus first of its kind” by Robert Firpo-Cappiello, April 4, 1996. ebar.com
