I just thought Harry was a great asset to San Francisco and did a really fantastic job. He’s kind of an unsung hero because he’s so unassuming.

Tom Ammiano, Kiss My Gay Ass, Bay Guardian Books, 2020, p. 65

Harry Britt, who succeeded Harvey Milk on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, passed away on June 24, 2020 after a long illness. He was 82.

Britt served on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors from 1979 through 1992, including serving as Board President after his first-place finish in his final election.

A former Methodist minister from Clover, South Carolina, Britt had spent his life doing everything expected of him, according to Randy Shilts in The Mayor of Castro Street. President of the Port Arthur Methodist Youth Fellowship (MYF) and then regional president. High school debate squad, student body president, National Merit Scholar – and then president of his fraternity at Duke University, where he graduated in three years.

He was working as a Methodist Minister in Chicago when Rev. Martin Luther King was assassinated. That galvanized personal changes, including a divorce, moving to San Francisco to find a guru, and eventually coming out. He became politically involved, walking precincts for Harvey Milk’s political campaigns and becoming a founding member of the San Francisco Gay Democratic Club (which would be renamed the Harvey Milk LGBTQ Democratic Club following Milk’s assassination).

He was one of four people identified by Milk in his will as acceptable successors and was the one that newly-elevated Mayor Dianne Feinstein ultimately selected.

“Dianne Feinstein had become the Mayor after Moscone was murdered,” former Supervisor and Assembly Member Tom Ammino wrote in his recent memoir, Kiss My Gay Ass. “[O]ne of Dianne’s immediate jobs was to appoint someone to fill Harvey’s seat on the Board of Supervisors…. So Dianne did the right thing and she appointed Harry Britt to Harvey’s seat. She probably later regretted it in some ways because he never voted with her on big issues and he did strong rent control and police reform and all kinds of things that Dianne was against. But appointing Harry was astute. The pulse was, ‘C’mon! Milk got murdered for who he was. And you can’t benefit from that by appointing someone who was aligned with you as opposed to someone who will carry on Harvey’s work. You can’t benefit from that.’”

In 1987, Britt ran for Congress in the special election to replace Rep. Sala Burton, narrowly losing to Nancy Pelosi in her first run for elected office. He later ran for California State Assembly in 2002 against then-Supervisor Mark Leno, who won the race.