A ship will be named for the late Harvey Milk, a gay rights icon and San Francisco politician, according to a Congressional notification signed by Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus this month.
A Military Sealift Command fleet oiler will be named the USNS Harvey Milk, reports
USNI News, a publication of the U.S. Naval Institute, marking the second of the John Lewis-class oilers now being built in San Diego.
The John Lewis class series has been named after civil rights activist and Georgia Democratic Rep. John Lewis, and the the ships in the series are being named for civil rights leaders.
Others in the series of oilers, being built by General Dynamics NASSCO, will be named in honor of Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren, whose court desegregated schools; late Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy; abolitionist Sojourner Truth; and women's rights activist Lucy Stone, reports USNI.
Milk was commissioned in the U.S. Navy in 1951, after growing up in a Naval family, and served on the submarine rescue ship Kittiwake as a diving officer in San Francisco until 1955, during the Korean War.
After his honorable discharge from the Navy, where he was a lieutenant junior grade, Milk eventually was elected as the first openly gay California politician to the San Francisco board of supervisors.
When Milk was murdered on Nov. 27, 1978, along with San Francisco Mayor George Moscone by former city supervisor Dan White, he was wearing his U.S. Navy diver's belt buckle, USNI pointed out.
California politicians have been pushing the Navy to name a ship for Milk since the 2011 repeal of the federal "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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