U.S. Navy to name ship after LGBT rights icon Harvey Milk
The U.S. Navy is set to name a ship after San Francisco LGBT rights icon Harvey Milk, CBS News confirmed Friday.
A Navy official told CBS News an official announcement will be made at a later date.
On Thursday, USNI News, a U.S. Naval Institute website, cited a congressional notification it obtained, signed by Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, as saying the second in a new class of fleet oiler ships would be named the USNS Harvey Milk.
An oiler is a combat logistics ship that can replenish other ships with fuel, ammunition and other supplies while underway, CBS San Francisco reports.
The John Lewis-class of ships, named for longtime civil rights activist Rep. John Lewis, D-Georgia, will be named after other civil rights leaders.
Others in the class still to be built include former Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren, whose court desegregated U.S. schools, former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, women's rights activist Lucy Stone and abolitionist and women's rights activist Sojourner Truth.
Milk was the first openly gay politician to be elected to office in California when he was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977. Eleven months later, he and then-Mayor George Moscone were assassinated by former Supervisor Dan White inside San Francisco City Hall.
Milk joined the Navy during the Korean War and served as a diving officer, earning an honorable discharge in 1955 having attained the rank of lieutenant, junior grade.