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Speaker 1: Hey, history fans, here's a rerun for today, brought to

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Speaker 1: you by Tracy V. Wilson. We hope it makes previous

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Speaker 1: episodes for this date easier to find in the feed.

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Speaker 1: Welcome to this day in History Class from how Stuff

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Speaker 1: Works dot com and from the desk of Stuff you

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Speaker 1: missed in History Class. It's the show where we explore

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Speaker 1: the past one day at a time with a quick

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Speaker 1: look at what happened today in history. Hello, and welcome

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Speaker 1: to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson, and it's November.

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Speaker 1: On this day. In nine, San Francisco Mayor George Musconey

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Speaker 1: and Supervisor Harvey Milk were assassinated by former supervisor Dan White.

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Speaker 1: White had resigned seventeen days earlier, but he had tried

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Speaker 1: to be reinstated as a member of the Board of Supervisors.

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Speaker 1: But while the mayor had initially said that he would

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Speaker 1: be able to return to his job, when he made

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Speaker 1: this request, the mayor refused. Mayor Musconey had run on

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Speaker 1: a platform of social progress and inclusion, and while in

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Speaker 1: office he had appointed women and people of color and

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Speaker 1: gay people to government positions. White, on the other hand,

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Speaker 1: had campaign with the slogan of unite and fight, and

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Speaker 1: in one pamphlet he had said, quote, I am not

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Speaker 1: going to be forced out of San Francisco by splinter

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Speaker 1: groups of radicals, social deviats, and incorrigibles. He had also

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Speaker 1: voted against a gay rights ordinance in San Francisco. The

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Speaker 1: mayor had seen an opportunity to replace White with somebody

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Speaker 1: who was more in line with his own goals. He

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Speaker 1: had tried to pass a number of reforms before White's resignation,

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Speaker 1: and they had consistently failed by one vote. So on

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Speaker 1: the day of the murders, Mayor Musconey was planning to

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Speaker 1: announce White's replacement, but on the morning of the seven,

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Speaker 1: White entered the building through a window to bypass metal detectors.

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Speaker 1: He entered Musconey's office and shot him four times, and

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Speaker 1: then he went into the office of Harvey Milk in

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Speaker 1: the supervisor's chambered down the hall and shot him five

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Speaker 1: times before leaving the bill holding. Later on, he said

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Speaker 1: that there were others he had planned to kill at

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Speaker 1: city Hall as well. Acting Mayor Diane Feinstein, who had

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Speaker 1: been the person to discover Harvey Milk's body, made this

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Speaker 1: announcement quote as president of the Board of Supervisors. It's

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Speaker 1: my duty to make this announcement. Both Mayor Musconey and

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Speaker 1: Supervisor Harvey Milk have been shot and killed. The assembled

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Speaker 1: crowd was stunned and very vocal, and once they were quieted,

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Speaker 1: she continued quote, the suspect is Supervisor Dan White. White's

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Speaker 1: defense when this came to trial was diminished capacity, and

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Speaker 1: that has come into common parlance as the twinkie defense.

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Speaker 1: But that idea is really a myth. There were some

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Speaker 1: mentions of junk foods in one psychiatrist testimony in this trial,

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Speaker 1: but it was really about being under a huge amount

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Speaker 1: of stress and prone to cycles of depression. So the

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Speaker 1: testimony about junk food wasn't that Dan why ate a

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Speaker 1: bunch of twinkies and this caused him to commit murder.

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Speaker 1: It was that the junk food based diet was a

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Speaker 1: symptom of his struggling mental health, and that it also

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Speaker 1: exacerbated the existing underlying problems that he was having. The

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Speaker 1: twinkie defense nickname was spread through news coverage but doesn't

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Speaker 1: actually describe how junk food came up in the trial.

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Speaker 1: Even though he had confessed to the crime and he

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Speaker 1: had reloaded his gun before approaching Harvey Milk, Dan White

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Speaker 1: was found guilty of manslaughter rather than murder. He was

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Speaker 1: sentenced to seven years eight months in prison and would

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Speaker 1: ultimately serve a little more than five years. The verdict

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Speaker 1: led to a public outrage, including what came to be

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Speaker 1: known as the White Knight Riot and a candle light

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Speaker 1: march from San Francisco's Castro District to city Hall. California

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Speaker 1: later abolished the diminished capacity defense in part because of

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Speaker 1: its successful use in Dan White's trial. He took his

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Speaker 1: own life after getting out of prison. In in a

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Speaker 1: lot of ways, the assassination of Harvey Milk has overshadowed

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Speaker 1: that of Mayor Musconey. Milk was one of the first

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Speaker 1: openly gay elected officials in the United States, and he

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Speaker 1: was a known public figure and activist in San Francisco.

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Speaker 1: How or whether homophobia affected White's actions and the jury's

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Speaker 1: verdict has been debated in the years since all of

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Speaker 1: this happened, and Milk himself has become a lot more

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Speaker 1: widely known in the context of the gay rights movement.

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Speaker 1: But the mayor was Dan White's primary target, and in

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Speaker 1: addition to Harvey Milk, he had planned to target to

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Speaker 1: other elected officials, and according to reports, White blamed all

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Speaker 1: four of them for his loss of his position as supervisor.

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Speaker 1: Thanks to Eves jeff Cope for her research work on

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Speaker 1: Today's podcast, and thanks to Casey Pigraham and Chandler Mays

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Speaker 1: for their audio work on this show. You can subscribe

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Speaker 1: to the Stay in History Class on Apple Podcasts, Google podcast,

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Speaker 1: wherever real to get your podcasts. You can tune tomorrow

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Speaker 1: for another story about pirates. Yeah,