Long Beach's Harvey Milk Park Committee wants nominations for LGBTQ champions

Harvey Milk Promenade Park is the first park in the nation named for the slain civil rights leader. Photo: Trang Le/Q Voice News

LONG BEACH — There’s room on the wall for more names.

Nominations are open for local LGBTQ champions to be memorialized at Long Beach’s Harvey Milk Promenade Park, the first park in the nation named after California’s first openly gay elected official. The civil rights leader, who was was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977, was assassinated on Nov. 27, 1978.

Once the inductees are selected, they will be recognized on the park’s Equality Plaza Memorial Wall.

“The selection committee calls on the public to help it identify local lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer leaders who inspire and create change in their own lives and their own communities,” Raul A. Añorve, chair of the Harvey Milk Park Equality Plaza Selection Committee, said in a press statement.

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HARVEY MILK PARK

Harvey Milk Park, which opened in 2013 in Downtown at Third Street and The Promenade, honors and recognizes leaders in the local LGBTQ people who have used their time, talents, and passion to help advance the LGBTQ community in the same spirit as Milk.

Along with plaques commemorating these leaders and activists, the plaza includes a concrete replica of the soapbox Milk stood on and spoke from to inspire crowds, and a 20-foot flagpole flying the LGBTQ pride flag.

LGBTQ champions listed on the wall include activist Lee Glaze, attorney Stephanie Loftin, historian David Hensley, Long Beach Lesbian and Gay Pride co-founders Judi Doyle and Marilyn Barlow, former Signal Hill Councilwoman and activist Ellen Ward, among others.