Notable August events in San Francisco’s LGBTQ history.
Note that most of these events are of specific local LGBTQ interest, though a few nationally significant events are also included along with a few other San Francisco events of more general interest. Please contact us if you know of any other milestones that we should add.
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| Aug 02, 1873 | The first successful cable-car line, the Clay Street Hill Railroad, opens in San Francisco. It starts regular service September 1, 1873. |
| Aug 02, 1924 | Author James Baldwin (Giovanni’s Room; If Beale Street Could Talk), now honored on the Castro's Rainbow Honor Walk, is born in Harlem. |
| Aug 02, 2011 | David Munoz Diaz is charged with murdering Freddy Roberto Canul-Arguello in Buena Vista Park and trying to burn the body. Diaz claims that the victim accidentally died while they were having rough sex and that he lit the trash bin on fire to signal for help. The partially dismembered body was in the trash bin. He is later convicted of manslaughter. |
| Aug 02, 2013 | Glenn Burke and Dr. Tom Waddell, honorees on Castro's Rainbow Honor Walk, are among the first class to be inducted in the National Gay and Lesbian Sports Hall of Fame located in Chicago. |
| Aug 03, 1997 | Teddy Witherington is hired as San Francisco Pride's first Executive Director. |
| Aug 04, 2010 | Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker of San Francisco overturns Proposition 8, the 2008 referendum that banned same-sex marriage in California, on the grounds that it violates the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause. |
| Aug 05, 2012 | Chavela Vargas, an honoree on Castro's Rainbow Honor Walk, dies in Mexico. |
| Aug 07, 1843 | Charles Warren Stoddard, who had relationships with men and is believed to be San Francisco's first gay author, albeit not as openly as one could be today, is born in Rochester, New York. |
| Aug 07, 1944 | San Francisco poet Robert Duncan publishes a groundbreaking essay, "The Homosexual in Society," in Politics magazine. The essay advances the then-extraordinary argument that homosexuals are an unfairly persecuted minority. |
| Aug 07, 1992 | Fereydoun Farrokhzad, an honoree on Castro's Rainbow Honor Walk, is murdered in Bonn, Germany. |
| Aug 08, 1951 | Journalist/author Randy Shilts (The Mayor of Castro Street; And the Band Played On) is born in Iowa. |
| Aug 08, 1983 | Bobbi Campbell, a public health nurse living with AIDS who becomes one of the disease's most well-known advocates, appears on the cover of Newsweek with his lover, Bobby Hilliard. |
| Aug 08, 1988 | The SOMA sex club Blow Buddies opens. It survives into 2020, but never recovers after being shuttered during the COVID-19 pandemic. |
| Aug 09, 1926 | Frank Robinson, a science fiction/techno-thriller author (including The Glass Tower, the basis for the film The Towering Inferno), as well as Harvey Milk's friend, speechwriter, and co-executor of his estate, is born in Chicago. |
| Aug 09, 2007 | Logo, an LGBTQ cable channel, holds the first presidential debate on LGBT issues. Six Democrats participate; none of the Republicans do. |
| Aug 11, 1934 | 137 prisoners first arrive at the newly established federal prison on Alcatraz Island. |
| Aug 11, 1952 | Drag entertainer Doris Fish is born in Sydney, Australia and grows up in the suburb of Manley Vale. She adopts her stage name in 1972 and moves to San Francisco in 1976. |
| Aug 11, 1971 | The grand opening of Boot Camp, a South of Market leather bar, merits a mention in Herb Caen's column in the San Francisco Chronicle. |
| Aug 11, 1980 | The Democratic National Convention opens in NYC. It is the first convention for a major political party to have a gay rights plank in its platform. |
| Aug 12, 1907 | Gladys Bentley, an honoree on Castro's Rainbow Honor Walk, is born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. |
| Aug 12, 2004 | The California Supreme Court voids nearly 4,000 same-sex marriages that had been performed in San Francisco earlier in the year. |
| Aug 12, 2009 | San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk, who was assassinated in 1978, is posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama. |
| Aug 13, 1998 | The Bay Area Reporter's headline reads "No Obits" for the first time since the AIDS crisis began due to medical treatments slowing AIDS deaths. |
| Aug 14, 1948 | Carole Migden is born in New York City. She and Roberta Achtenberg were the first lesbians to serve on the SF Board of Supervisors, and she later went on to represent the City in the State Assembly and then the State Senate. |
| Aug 15, 1938 | Stephen Breyer, one of the liberal justices of the U.S. Supreme Court who consistently rules in favor of LGBTQ rights, is born in San Francisco. He graduates from Lowell High School in SF in 1955. |
| Aug 15, 1984 | Bobbi Campbell, a public health nurse who becomes one of the best-known AIDS activists, dies of cryptosporidiosis as a result of AIDS. |
| Aug 17, 2014 | SF Gay History launches with our first post, an essay called "Why Pride?" |
| Aug 19, 1936 | Federico García Lorca, a Spanish dramatist and theatre director honored on Castro's Rainbow Honor Walk, dies. |
| Aug 19, 2013 | Jose Sarria, the Widow Norton, First Empress of San Francisco, passes away at the age of 89 or 90. (His birth year is disputed.) |
| Aug 21, 1981 | Steve McEachern has a fatal heart attack at the Catacombs in San Francisco, a BDSM sex club and the most famous fisting club in the world, while engaged in a private scene with his lover, forcing the Catacombs to close. |
| Aug 21, 1994 | Rikki Streicher, owner of several lesbian bars (including Maud's and Amelia's) and co-founder of the Gay Games and Federation of Gay Games, dies of cancer. Mayor Frank Jordan lowers city flags to half-mast. An athletic field at the Eureka Valley Rec Center is renamed in her honor. |
| Aug 21, 2009 | Doug Murphy, owner of Moby Dick, 440 Castro, and Blackbird, unexpectedly dies from H1N1, the Swine Flu. |
| Aug 23, 1955 | Richard William Paul "Dick" Pabich, an LGBTQ activist who served as Harvey Milk's campaign manager and legislative aide, is born in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin. |
| Aug 24, 1987 | Civil rights leader Bayard Rustin, openly-gay organizer of the 1963 March on Washington, dies of appendicitis. |
| Aug 26, 1966 | Transwomen and drag queens picket Compton's Cafeteria in the Tenderloin, triggering one of the first LGBTQ riots in U.S. history, predating the Stonewall Riots by three years. |
| Aug 26, 2019 | Under pressure from the Harvey Milk Lesbian / Gay / Bisexual / Transgender / Queer Democratic Club, San Francisco Police Chief William Scott formally apologizes for the police department's history of harassment against the LGBTQ community. |
| Aug 27, 2008 | Dorothy Louise Taliaferro "Del" Martin, a founder of the Daughters of Bilitis, dies in San Francisco. |
| Aug 28, 1951 | In Stoumen v. Reilly, the California Supreme Court rules in favor of the Black Cat Tavern, which authorities had closed for serving homosexuals. The court ruled that homosexuals have a right to congregate and establishments cannot not be closed simply for serving them. In response, city officials pass laws banning gay behavior like dancing together, holding hands, and dressing in drag. |
| Aug 28, 1978 | Jack Lira, who is Harvey Milk's lover at the time of Milk's election and inauguration as a San Francisco Supervisor, commits suicide in their shared apartment. |
| Aug 28, 1982 | Tina Turner performs at the opening ceremonies at the first Gay Games, held at Kezar Stadium in San Francisco. |
| Aug 31, 1994 | The U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco rules that the U.S. Navy improperly discharged Keith Meinhold because their pre-"Don't Act, Don't Tell" dismissal was based on Meinhold's speech rather than actual homosexual behavior. Meinhold had disclosed in a 1992 ABC News interview that he was gay. |
Other Months
January ◈ February ◈ March ◈ April ◈ May ◈ June ◈ July ◈ August ◈ September ◈ October ◈ November ◈ December ◈ Current
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