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Randy Shilts (1951 - 1994)
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 The
Mayor of Castro Street : The Life and Times of Harvey Milk by
Randy Shilts
When Randy Shilts's The Mayor of Castro
Street appeared in 1982, the very idea of a gay political
biography was brand-new. While biographies of literary and
artistic figures (both living and dead) were a popular genre,
there had been no openly gay political figure who merited a
full-length book. Harvey Milk--a gay political organizer who
became the first openly gay city supervisor in San Francisco and
was then assassinated (along with liberal mayor George Moscone)--was
the obvious choice for such a book. And Randy Shilts--a young
reporter who had risen up through the gay press to become the
first openly gay reporter with a gay "beat" in the
American mainstream press--was the perfect person to write it.
While his later works such as And the Band Played On and Conduct
Unbecoming were based on hard-hitting, fact-driven reportage,
Shilts's tone in The Mayor of Castro Street is softer, more
focused on the narrative of Harvey Milk's political rise from
running a small business on Castro Street, to organizing local gay
men and lesbians around grass-roots issues, to winning an elected
office. But in many ways this is also a forceful and engaging
story of the gay rights movement in the second half of the 20th
century. Thus, Shilts follows the growth of the Castro as a gay
neighborhood and the growth of San Francisco's gay community from
a ragtag collection of people who socialized and sexualized
together into a vibrant and political force. --Michael Bronski
 And
the Band Played on : Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic by
Randy Shilts
In the first major book
on AIDS, San Francisco Chronicle reporter Randy Shilts examines
the making of an epidemic. Shilts researched and reported the book
exhaustively, chronicling almost day-by-day the first five years
of AIDS. His work is critical of the medical and scientific
communities' initial response and particularly harsh on the Reagan
Administration, who he claims cut funding, ignored calls for
action and deliberately misled Congress. Shilts doesn't stop
there, wondering why more people in the gay community, the mass
media and the country at large didn't stand up in anger more
quickly. The AIDS pandemic is one of the most striking
developments of the late 20th century and this is the definitive
story of its beginnings.
"And the Band
Played On is about the kind of people we have been for the
past seven years. That is its terror, and its strength."
-- The New York Times Book Review, H.
Jack Geiger
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Journalism: Author of 'And the Band Played On'
is credited with awakening nation to the health crisis, The
Times Mirror Company; Los Angeles Times - February 18, 1994,
Friday, Home Edition PAGE: A-1, TYPE: Obituary by Jenifer Warren
and Richard C. Paddock; Times Staff Writers
Excerpt:
SAN FRANCISCO -- Randy Shilts, a tenacious,
award-winning journalist who became the nation's foremost
chronicler of gay life and the AIDS epidemic, died early Thursday
at his ranch in the Sonoma County redwoods. He was 42.
Shilts, who learned he was infected with HIV in
1987, died of AIDS, according to a statement released by the San
Francisco Chronicle, where Shilts worked as a national
correspondent.
Best known for his groundbreaking writing on the
disease that took his life, Shilts was hailed by gay leaders and
fellow journalists as a pioneer whose work propelled AIDS out of
anonymity and into the consciousness of mainstream America.
"Each and every person claimed by AIDS is a
loss to the movement," said David M. Smith of the National
Gay and Lesbian Task Force. "But Randy's contribution was so
crucial. He broke through society's denial and was absolutely
critical to communicating the reality of AIDS."
William German, editor of the San Francisco
Chronicle, said the newspaper where Shilts worked for 13 years is
indebted to him, as society should be...
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In 1985, after the shocking assassinations of
the first two openly gay politicians, San Francisco Supervisor
Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone, gay man and political
activist Cleve Jones began to understand a need for communal
unity. At the end of one of the candlelight marches, he asked the
crowd to write down on individual notecards the names of loved
ones that had fallen victim to AIDS. He then read the names at the
end of the march and then taped the notecards onto the Federal
building. Jones immediately recognized the similarity between the
notecards and a patchwork quilt, and thus was born the NAMES
Project AIDS Memorial Quilt. Beginning at a small local level in
San Francisco, soon became an internationally acclaimed project
giving family members, lovers and friends to commemorate those
close to them that had died of AIDS. [This page hosts] the patch
that friends made in honor of Randy Shilts..
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This page includes an passage from Conduct
Unbecoming
Excerpt:
We mourn the passing of world War II veteran,
Johnnie Phelps, a brave, wonderful, kind and generous woman, who
later headed the Los Angeles chapter of the National
Organization for Women, providing key strategic support and
morale for the infamous 1980 lesbian harassment and witchhunting
incident aboard the Norton Sound. Way before Ellen,
Johnnie stood up to then General Eisenhower, outing herself as a
lesbian. The story appears in Randy Shilts' masterpiece of
investigative journalism, Conduct Unbecoming..
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By Randy Shilts
On the first night of the Scud missile attacks
on American troops in the Persian Gulf, an Army specialist fourth
class with the 27th Field Artillery found himself cramped in a
foxhole with three other men. Like many young enlisted men,
the specialist (who asked that his name not be used) had
previously confided to the other men, his friends, that he was
gay.
During that night in the foxhole, they huddled
together in the suffocating suits meant to protect them from
chemical and biological warfare agents. They could not see
one another, but to reassure themselves they they were still
there, still alive, each man kept one hand on the other.
Nobody seemed to mind that one reassuring hand belonged to a
homosexual, the soldier recalls -- there were more important tings
to think about...
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By Michael Bronski, ZMagazine
Excerpt:
The criticism that Randy Shilts faced from
within the community--including flack from many PWAS for keeping
his HIV-status hidden for years--raises basic questions about the
responsibility of reporters who are gay and who cover issues of
concern for the gay community be in the mainstream as well as the
gay press. Randy Shilts prided himself on being
"objective"--that is having no overt, political agenda
in his writing. His attacks on the national gay press were
predicated on that fact that he considered them, because of their
stated politics, biased and unprofessional. This was an angle that
the mainstream press -always eager to find ways to attack the
reliability of the gay press--loved. There was no doubt that
Shilts had made it in to the mainstream, and reading his
work--particularly in And the Band Played On --it is easy
to see why. While he was surely critical of the way that the
Federal government handled AIDS he was equally as critical of the
gay community. And while criticism of the community from insiders
is fine (god knows, as with any minority community,
internal criticism is rife) Shilts's opinions dovetailed very
neatly with those of mainstream society. The most serious
criticisms included persistent attacks on AIDS activists as well
as those whom Shilts calls "gay leaders," snide attacks
on the sexual promiscuity of gay men, and an infuriating
inclination to dismiss any "civil liberties"
discussions--particularly in relation to mandatory HIV
testing--with an unarticulated, and ill informed, "public
health" rational...
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