# White Night Riots (1979) A violent uprising in **San Francisco on May 21, 1979** in response to the manslaughter verdict against **Dan White** — the former Supervisor who had assassinated [[Harvey Milk]] and Mayor **[[George Moscone]]** at City Hall on November 27, 1978. White was convicted only of **voluntary manslaughter** (not first- or second-degree murder) and sentenced to seven years and eight months — a verdict produced in part by the now-infamous **"Twinkie defense"** argument that junk food contributed to his diminished capacity. ## The Night When the verdict was announced on the afternoon of May 21, organizers including [[Cleve Jones]] and Sylvester led a candlelight march from the Castro to **San Francisco City Hall**. As the crowd grew to several thousand, frustration broke into open rioting. Protesters: - **Smashed all of the City Hall's first-floor windows** - **Set fire to twelve SFPD patrol cars** parked in front of the building - **Wounded dozens of police officers** in clashes outside the building Later that night, in retaliation, **plainclothes SFPD officers raided the Elephant Walk bar** in the Castro, beating patrons indiscriminately in what witnesses described as a police riot. Over 100 protesters and 60 police officers were injured in the day's events. ## Political Consequences The White Night Riots produced immediate political consequences: - **SFPD Chief Charles Gain was fired** within months - **Civilian review of police violence in San Francisco was substantially restructured** - **The LGBTQ-police relationship in San Francisco was fundamentally reshaped** — the post-1979 era featured the city's first openly gay police-academy graduates and a much more politically active LGBTQ presence in city government - **Dan White's eventual 1985 suicide** ended what had been an active gay-rights political demand that he be re-tried ## Place in the Vault White Night is the **largest American LGBTQ riot in the post-Stonewall era** prior to the AIDS-era ACT UP actions. It is the political bookend to [[Harvey Milk]]'s assassination — the moment when the same San Francisco LGBTQ community that had elected the first openly gay supervisor in U.S. history rose against the criminal-justice system's perceived devaluation of his murder. --- ## See Also - [[Queer Liberation Ecosystem]] - [[Queer Liberation Timeline]] - [[Harvey Milk]]