Murder of Robert Hillsborough | |
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Part of homophobia in the United States | |
Location | San Francisco, California, U.S. |
Coordinates | 37°45′37″N122°25′14″W / 37.760225°N 122.420692°W |
Date | June 22, 1977; 47 years ago |
Attack type | |
Victim | Robert Hillsborough |
Verdict |
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Convictions |
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On June 22, 1977, Robert Hillsborough, a 33-year-old American gay man, was murdered in San Francisco by John Cordova, a 19-year-old from Daly City. Cordova and three other young men followed Hillsborough to his apartment in the Mission and stabbed him fifteen times in the face and chest.
Cordova was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 10 years in prison. Though Hillsborough was the nineteenth gay man to be murdered in the United States in 1977, it was his death which galvanized political mobilization amongst the LGBT community to fight for human rights. [1] [2] His family unsuccessfully sued anti-gay activist Anita Bryant for inciting violence against gay people.
Robert Hillsborough (born March 10, 1944) was a gardener who took care of the greenery at a playground near San Francisco City Hall. [3] He was known as Mr. Greenjeans by the children at the park. [4]
John Cordova was a nineteen-year-old from Daly City. [5]
On the evening of June 21, 1977, Hillsborough went to a disco with his boyfriend, Jerry Taylor. Around midnight, the two left the club and drove to a drive-in hamburger joint, where a group of youths recognized them as gay. [2] The four young men verbally attacked them and hit Hillsborough several times through an open car window. When he backed out of the parking space and headed towards home, the attackers also followed them in their car. As Hillsborough and Taylor got out of the car outside their home in the Mission District, they were attacked at the corner of Nineteenth and Lexington Streets. Taylor escaped over a high fence, but Hillsborough was knocked to the ground and beaten, and Cordova stabbed him fifteen times in the face and chest. [1] [4] [6] The attackers shouted "Faggot! Faggot! Faggot!" and "This one’s for Anita!", referring to activist Anita Bryant, who was the face of the Save Our Children campaign fighting to overturn Miami's anti-discrimination law. [7] [2] [8]
Neighbors called the police and an ambulance, but Hillsborough was pronounced dead three quarters of an hour after the attack, after being taken to a nearby hospital. [2] The attackers were arrested the same day. The killer, John Cordova, was 19 at the time of the crime, the other attackers ranged from 16 to 21. [1] [2] Cordova and a 21-year-old were charged with murder; the first of them was sentenced to 10 years in prison, the second was acquitted, the other two members of the group were not charged as witnesses testified that they did not get out of the car. [3]
The victim's mother, as well as Mayor George Moscone, in public statements indicated that the assassination was inspired by Anita Bryant and Senator John Briggs, a politician counting on the support of Christian fundamentalists in the fight for the governorship of California. [6] [7] [9] [10] The mayor also ordered flags in the city to be lowered to half-mast. [9] In response to this murder, the LGBT community in San Francisco organized the largest pride march to date [7] (Gay Freedom Day Parade) on June 26, with between 200,000 [6] and a quarter of a million participants [1] [9] (some sources claim 300,000 participants). [2] [3] Despite police fears, both the march and Hillsborough's funeral took place without major incidents. [9] During the march, Harvey Milk announced his intention to run for city council. [9]
Robert Hillsborough's mother sued Anita Bryant, her husband, Senator Briggs and others in July for conspiring to take away Hillsborough's civil rights by unleashing a "campaign of hate, bigotry and prejudice against him and other homosexuals", but the suit was dismissed.
Dorothy Louise Taliaferro "Del" Martin and Phyllis Ann Lyon were an American lesbian couple based in San Francisco who were known as feminist and gay-rights activists.
Anti-LGBTQ rhetoric comprises themes, catchphrases, and slogans that have been used in order to demean lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) people. They range from the demeaning and the pejorative to expressions of hostility towards homosexuality which are based on religious, medical, or moral grounds. It is widely considered a form of hate speech, which is illegal in countries such as the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden.
Harvey Bernard Milk was an American politician and the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California, as a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.
Anita Jane Bryant is a retired American singer and anti-gay activist. She had three top 20 hits in the United States in the early 1960s. She was the 1958 Miss Oklahoma beauty pageant winner, and a brand ambassador from 1969 to 1980 for the Florida Citrus Commission.
PFLAG is the United States' largest organization dedicated to supporting, educating, and advocating for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) people and those who love them. PFLAG National is the national organization, which provides support to the PFLAG network of local chapters. PFLAG has nearly 400 chapters across the United States, with more than 350,000 members and supporters.
This is a list of notable events in the history of LGBT rights that took place in the year 1978.
This is a list of notable events in the history of LGBT rights that took place in the year 1977.
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California Proposition 6, informally known as the Briggs Initiative, was an unsuccessful ballot initiative put to a referendum on the California state ballot in the November 7, 1978 election. It was sponsored by John Briggs, a conservative state legislator from Orange County. The failed initiative sought to ban gays and lesbians from working in California's public schools.
Fruit, fruity, and fruitcake, as well as its many variations, are slang or even sexual slang terms which have various origins. These terms have often been used derogatorily to refer to LGBT people. Usually used as pejoratives, the terms have also been re-appropriated as insider terms of endearment within LGBT communities. Many modern pop culture references within the gay nightlife like "Fruit Machine" and "Fruit Packers" have been appropriated for reclaiming usage, similar to queer.
This is a list of notable events in the history of LGBT rights that took place in the 1970s.
Save Our Children, Inc. was an American political coalition formed in 1977 in Miami, Florida, to overturn a recently legislated county ordinance that banned discrimination in areas of housing, employment, and public accommodation based on sexual orientation. The coalition was publicly headed by celebrity singer Anita Bryant, who claimed the ordinance discriminated against her right to teach her children biblical morality. It was a well-organized campaign that initiated a bitter political fight between gay activists and Christian fundamentalists. When the repeal of the ordinance went to a vote, it attracted the largest response of any special election in Dade County's history, passing by a more than 2-to-1 margin.
The history of violence against LGBT people in the United States is made up of assaults on gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgender individuals (LGBTQ), legal responses to such violence, and hate crime statistics in the United States of America. The people who are the targets of such violence are believed to violate heteronormative rules and they are also believed to contravene perceived protocols of gender and sexual roles. People who are perceived to be LGBT may also be targeted for violence. Violence can also occur between couples who are of the same sex, with statistics showing that violence among female same-sex couples is more common than it is among couples of the opposite sex, but male same-sex violence is less common.
Jeanne Córdova was an American writer and supporter of the lesbian and gay rights movement, founder of The Lesbian Tide, and a founder of the West Coast LGBT movement. A former Catholic nun, Córdova was a second-wave feminist lesbian activist and self-described butch.
The lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBTQ) community in San Francisco is one of the largest and most prominent LGBT communities in the United States, and is one of the most important in the history of American LGBT rights and activism alongside New York City. The city itself has been described as "the original 'gay-friendly city'". LGBT culture is also active within companies that are based in Silicon Valley, which is located within the southern San Francisco Bay Area.
In 1977, the Texas State Bar Association invited country singer Anita Bryant to perform at a meeting in Houston, Texas. In response to Bryant's outspoken anti-gay views and her Save Our Children campaign, thousands of members of the Houston LGBT community and their supporters marched through the city to the venue in protest on June 16, 1977. The protests have been called "Houston's Stonewall" and set into motion the major push for LGBT rights in Houston.
This is a timeline of notable events in the history of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community in the United States.
The following is a timeline of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) history in the 20th century.
The Florida orange juice boycott from 1977 to 1980 was an LGBT protest against the anti-gay activism of Anita Bryant and the Save Our Children campaign. The boycott lasted from January 1977 until Bryant's firing from the Florida Citrus Commission in 1980.
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