The Rise, Fall, and Rise Again of the Civil Rights Movement

Lesson #2: Anita Bryant and Harvey Milk

Learning Objectives:

1. Students will explore the case of Anita Bryant and Harvey Milk
2. Students will analyze primary source documents

Lesson Development:

1. Mount each passage in the center of a piece of Chart Paper - one passage per piece of paper. Hang the excerpts on the wall around the room.
2. Students can start at any of the passages.
3. They must read the passage and write a response.
4. After a few minutes, they rotate to a new passage. This time the read the passage, and other student's responses, and then add their own ideas.
5. After a few minutes, they rotate to a new passage and repeat the process.
6. They must remain silent for the duration of the activity.
7. After students have responded to each passage, they can revisit other passages and read what other students might have written.

Suggested Readings - All can be found in the Wilson and Retter book

From Anita Bryant: [Homosexuals] were asking for special privileges that violated the state [sodomy] law of Florida, not to mention God's law . . . Why do you think homosexuals are called fruits? It's because they eat the forbidden fruit of the tree of life . . . I was standing up for my rights as a mother to protect my children after I realized what the threat the homosexuals were posing meant . . . [The antidiscrimination ordinance] would have made it mandatory tat flaunting homosexuals be hired in both the public and parochial schools . . . If they're a legitimate minority group, then so are nail biters, dieters, fat people, short people and murderers . . . I have no respect for homosexuals who insist that their deviant lifestyle is normal. We pray for them, we try to lead them out of it . . . I love the sinner but I hate the sin.

From Michael Novak: In past ages, homosexuality was sometimes construed as a danger to the human race because it meant (a) a decline in population, or (b) a decline in thosemasculine qualities essential for survival. What happened in the socialization of the young male was perceived to be a greater significance, and of greater risk, to the race that what happened to the female . . . Lesbianism may suggest infantile pleasure and regression, but it does not threaten the public, at least not to the same extent that male homosexuality does. . . . Female homosexuality seems somehow more natural, perhaps harmless. Male Sexuality seems to represent a breakdown of an important form of socialization . . . Society has a strong interest, in private and in public, in encouraging heterosexuality and in discouraging homosexuality.

From Harvey Milk: My name is Harvey Milk - and I want to recruit you. I want to recruit you for the fight to preserve democracy from the John Briggs and the Anita Bryants who are trying to constitutionalize bigotry. We are not going to allow that to happen. We are not going to sit back in silence as 300,00o of our gay brothers and sisters did in Nazi Germany. We are not going to allow our rights to be taken away and then march with bowed heads into the gas chambers. On this anniversary of Stonewall I ask my gay sisters and brothers to make the commitment to fight. For themselves, for their freedoms, for their country.

From Harvey Milk: What are you going to do about it? You must come out . . . to your relatives. I know that that is hard and will upset them but think of how they will upset you in the voting booth. Come out to your friends, if indeed they are your friends. Come out to your neighbors, to your fellow workers, to the people who work where you eat and shop . . . Once and for all, break down the myths, destroy the lies and distortions. For your sake. For their sake. For the sake of the youngsters who are becoming scared by the votes from Dade to Eugene.

From Harvey Milk: On the Statue of Liberty if says: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free." In the Declaration of independence it is written: "All men are created equal and they are endowed with certain inalienable rights." And in our National Anthem it says: "Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner yet wave o'er the land of the free." For Mr. Briggs and Mrs. Bryant . . . and all the bigots out there: That's what America is. No matter how hard you try, you cannot erase those words from the Declaration of Independence. No matter how hard you try, you cannot chip those words away from off the base of the Statue of Liberty. And no matter how hard you try you cannot sing the "Star Spangled Banner" without those words. That's what America is."