Initiative 05 · 2018 · Public memory

SW Harvey Milk Street

Public names tell residents and visitors whose courage a city chooses to remember.

In 2018, Portland renamed a downtown section of SW Stark Street for Harvey Milk. City records identify Terry Bean as the person who first raised the idea of naming a street in Portland’s historic gay district for Milk.

Documented history · sources included

Terry Bean speaking publicly at a podium — Terry Bean speaking publicly · archive photograph

History in the streetscape

A civic landmark for courage and visibility.

Harvey Milk was one of the first openly gay elected officials in the United States. Naming a Portland street for him placed LGBTQ+ history alongside the civic recognition given to other civil-rights leaders.

Portland City Council records from the naming process state that Terry first proposed the idea. Community advocates then developed the proposal through public testimony and council consideration. The renamed street runs through an area long associated with Portland’s LGBTQ+ community.

The initiative joined memory to place. It gave Portland a permanent, everyday marker of LGBTQ+ political history and connected the city’s local landscape to a national civil-rights story.

A street name turns remembrance into part of daily public life.