Frank M. Robinson, a former Chicagoan who moved to San Francisco and later became a speechwriter for gay politician Harvey Milk, has died. He was inducted into the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame in 2009.
Robinson launched two gay papers in Chicago during the early 1970s. He was a journalist, novelist, and award-winning science fiction writer. Robinson has made significant contributions to LGBT communities in Chicago and nationally. As a member of the Chicago Gay Alliance in the early 1970s, Robinson edited and produced the first gay tabloid-format newspaper in the city's history, Chicago Gay Pride, which was published in June 1971 to promote that year's Pride Parade and events.
The longtime Chicago activist and Hall of Fame member Marie Kuda told the Hall of Fame that the idea to publish "was entirely Frank's; it was his money that fronted it, and he did all the prep work and layout including manually typing the entire issue." Because Robinson was not publicly "out" at the time, his byline did not appear in the paper. However, as Kuda put it, "The 'Editorial,' while unsigned and suggesting 'a committee,' was Frank's and you can recognize his internal 'signature' in literary allusions to everyone from Shakespeare to Pogo."
The following year, Robinson created The Paper, a second tabloid-format newspaper that featured coverage of the Pride Parade and rally, the Gay Book Awards at the American Library Association's convention, testimony by Chicago activists at the Democratic National Convention platform hearings, and other local cultural, social, and political activities. The significance of both publications in solidifying the city's nascent LGBT community was enormous. "By publicizing events and documenting a history," Kuda said, they "gave a face to the growing community that was comparable to establishment media." Robinson's pioneering efforts paved the way for other LGBT publications in Chicago.
After moving to San Francisco, Robinson wrote speeches for the campaigns that culminated in Harvey Milk's historic 1977 election to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. In a posthumously played tape-recorded statement, Milk named Robinson as one of his political heirs. Robinson had drafted Milk's famous "Hope Speech," featured in the 2008 biographical film Milk. In the film, Robinson had a cameo role portraying himself.
Born in Chicago in 1926 and raised in the city, Robinson attended Beloit College and earned a master's degree in journalism at Northwestern University. He served two tours of duty in the U.S. Navy as a radar technician during World War II and the Korean War.
Robinson is also a prominent novelist and historian of popular culture, with many books, screenplays, and illustrated coffee-table volumes to his credit. Several of his novels have been adapted for television and for feature films, including 1974's Hollywood blockbuster The Towering Inferno, based partly on The Glass Inferno, a novel of which Robinson and Thomas M. Scortia were co-authors. His novel The Dark Beyond the Stars received the 1991 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Men's Science Fiction and Fantasy from the Lambda Literary Foundation.
Human Rights Campaign president Chad Griffin issued the following statement:
"Through his collaboration with Harvey Milk, Frank Robinson gave the LGBT movement its rhetorical backbone—and brought hope to countless LGBT Americans, especially young people, for the very first time. I was lucky to meet Frank on my very first week on the job as HRC president, and though we all mourn his passing today, we're overwhelmed with gratitude for his contributions to this fight for equality."
Milk's speeches, famously immortalized and dramatized in the 2008 Gus Van Sant film Milk, but also recorded in the celebrated 1984 documentary The Times of Harvey Milk, were the first by an openly gay elected official to lay out the moral and political case for equality.
Dustin Lance Black, who grew close to Robinson while writing the screenplay for Milk, joined HRC in remembrance:
"For Frank, the word 'hope' was not a notion for our dreams, it was a bold call for immediate action in a time when it was illegal to be gay in every corner of this nation. He offered Harvey his strength, wit and wisdom. He shared the same with me, still grimacing at the idea of partial equality and patience. He felt strongly that what he called a 'checkerboard nation' of contradictory laws still denied LGBT young people the hope and pride he so desperately wanted for them. So each time we spoke, he'd end with, 'Fight on.'"
When Milk's life was cut short by an assassin's bullet in 1978, Robinson continued a distinguished career as a writer and author. Three of Robinson's novels were made into films or television series during his lifetime.
See glhalloffame.org/ .
