Searching for the Mayor of Castro Street; or, a Monument of One’s Own

But, you may say, we asked you to speak about women and fiction—what has that got to do with a room of one’s own? I will try to explain.

Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

But, you may say, we asked you to speak about national monuments and American identity—what has that got to do with the Mayor of Castro Street, Harvey Milk? I will try to explain.

Washington, DC, Monday, July 27, 2:00 pm

I've been assigned to blog about the Library of Congress, the first historical site that we will visit during our four-day expedition to the nation’s capital to study the complex relationship between place, memory, and citizenship. What are the facts about this cavernous repository of books, a repository so vast that both the gorgeous late-nineteenth-century Jefferson building that has housed its impressive collection beginning in 1897 and the John Adams building that was added in 1938 were no longer sufficient to accommodate its ever-expanding holdings? I won’t really be able to answer that question today, however, since our first meeting takes place in the map room of the Library’s most recently acquired, but architecturally unimpressive, James Madison building. We’re here to study early plans for the District of Columbia. I stop feeling disappointed by the exterior of the structure and instead become absorbed by L’Enfant’s vision of this new city—an absorption that is heightened by a lecture on the history of a swamp that became the seat of American government and of multiple marches on the city by wide-ranging groups of the marginalized, the disenfranchised demanding that their voices be heard, demanding their right to equality and participation in the democratic process.

Washington, DC, July 27, 9:00 pm

Although I have been to Washington many times since my first visit in the early 1980s, I have seen the Lincoln Memorial only from a distance, so I am excited about finally climbing the steps to the sculpture of a President who has been immortalized in history books for preserving the Union and for issuing the Emancipation Proclamation. I’m not expecting the well-spring of emotions that are churned up by the magnificence and majesty of the work of art itself and, perhaps more importantly, by the man it commemorates, a man whose name is synonymous with equality and freedom. I look up at him looking down at me and feel nothing but reverence. This reaction starts me thinking about emancipation, about equality, about freedom, and I realize that I have mapped onto a man, a sculpture, and a place—all of which have figured prominently in the ongoing struggle of African-Americans to achieve equality—the story of my own quest for liberation and equity. At the top of the stairway, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech. These words have been carved into a stone right in front of my feet. I have a dream, too. I hope that I will live to see on the Washington Mall not just the Lincoln Memorial and the massive sculpture of King that is in the making, but a monument to Harvey Milk, the first openly gay member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors who, like Pres. Lincoln and Dr. King, was assassinated by a man with hatred in his heart.


Washington, DC, July 27, 11:00 pm

I don’t realize as I stand here gazing at the Washington Monument and at the cupola of the Capital that this hope will shape the rest of my week in DC. But by the time I get back home late Thursday night, I will know what I’ve been seeking, but haven’t yet been able to find: a monument that says to America, “I am a part of your history, too. Yes, me. Me, a man, who had the courage to love other men in a time and place when love like ‘that’ was for most Americans still unspeakable, when that love still seemed like just cause for murder.” A monument that says to America, “We all matter. We all must be remembered. We must remember all. Not just me, but everyone who has lived and died in the name of emancipation, equality, and freedom. Chief Joseph and Susan B. Anthony and César Chávez and K. Patrick Okura and others.” A monument that lets me say to America, “Hey, I’m here. I was here. And when I’m gone, I’ll still be here. Carved in this statue of ‘The Mayor of Castro Street’ is my story, too. And the stories of generations of men and women who like him, like me, believe in a world in which everyone is truly free.” I know now what I’m seeking and in my lifetime still would love to find: a monument to Harvey Milk, a monument of my own.