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Randy Shilts (August 8, 1951February 17, 1994) was an American journalist and author. After studying journalism at the University of Oregon, Shilts began working as a
reporter A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalism ...
for both ''
The Advocate An advocate is a professional in the field of law. The Advocate, The Advocates or Advocate may also refer to: Magazines * ''The Advocate'' (LGBT magazine), an LGBT magazine based in the United States *''The Harvard Advocate'', a literary magazin ...
'' and the '' San Francisco Chronicle'', as well as for San Francisco Bay Area television stations. In the 1980s, he was noted for being the first openly gay reporter for the ''San Francisco Chronicle''. His first book, '' The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk'', was a biography of LGBT activist Harvey Milk. His second book, '' And the Band Played On'', chronicled the history of the
AIDS epidemic The global epidemic of HIV/AIDS (human immunodeficiency virus infection and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome) began in 1981, and is an ongoing worldwide public health issue. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), as of 2021, HIV/AI ...
. Despite some controversy surrounding the book in the LGBT community, Shilts was praised for his meticulous documentation of an epidemic that was little-understood at the time. It was later made into an HBO film of the same name in 1993. His final book, '' Conduct Unbecoming: Gays and Lesbians in the US Military from Vietnam to the Persian Gulf'', examined discrimination against lesbians and gays in the military. Shilts garnered several accolades for his work. He was honored with the 1988 Outstanding Author award from the
American Society of Journalists and Authors The American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA) was founded in 1948 as the Society of Magazine Writers, and is the professional association of independent nonfiction writers in the United States. History The organization was established in ...
, the 1990 Mather Lectureship at Harvard University, and the 1993 Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists' Association. Diagnosed with HIV in 1985, Shilts died of an AIDS-related illness in 1994 at the age of 42.


Early life

Born August 8, 1951, in
Davenport, Iowa Davenport is a city in and the county seat of Scott County, Iowa, United States. Located along the Mississippi River on the eastern border of the state, it is the largest of the Quad Cities, a metropolitan area with a population of 384,324 and a ...
, Shilts grew up in
Aurora, Illinois Aurora is a city in the Chicago metropolitan area located partially in DuPage County, Illinois, DuPage, Kane County, Illinois, Kane, Kendall County, Illinois, Kendall, and Will County, Illinois, Will counties in the U.S. state of Illinois. Locat ...
, with five brothers in a conservative, working-class family. He majored in journalism at the University of Oregon, where he worked on the student newspaper, the '' Oregon Daily Emerald'', as managing editor. While an undergraduate he came out publicly as gay,"Randy Shilts was gutsy, brash and unforgettable"
Weiss, Mike; '' San Francisco Chronicle'', February 17, 2004; Page D-1; Retrieved on July 10, 2019
and ran for student office with the slogan "Come out for Shilts." Randy Shilts was one of the first openly gay journalists to write for a major newspaper. His writing focused on LGBT issues, including the struggle for gay rights.


Journalism

Shilts graduated near the top of his class in 1975, but as an openly gay man, he struggled to find full-time employment in what he characterized as the homophobic environment of newspapers and television stations at that time. Shilts wrote for gay news magazine ''The Advocate'' but quit in 1978 after publisher David Goodstein began requiring employees to participate in EST; Shilts later wrote an exposé of Goodstein's brand of EST, the Advocate Experience. Shilts also says ''The Advocate'' was a "publication that had all these dirty classified ads in it. That I couldn’t send the publication to my parents that I worked for because it was all filled up with 'Gay white man wants somebody to piss on,' you know?" He subsequently worked as a freelance journalist until he was hired as a national correspondent by the ''San Francisco Chronicle'' in 1981, becoming "the first openly gay reporter with a gay 'beat' in the American mainstream press."Randy Shilts at Queer Theory
Retrieved on January 3, 2007
AIDS, the disease that would later take his life, first came to nationwide attention that same year and soon Shilts devoted himself to covering the unfolding story of the disease and its medical, social, and political ramifications. During the early years of the AIDS crisis, he denounced San Francisco's gay leaders as “inept” and “a bunch of jerks,” accusing them of hiding the emerging epidemic. In 1984, Shilts controversially supported closing the city's gay bathhouses.


Books

In addition to his extensive journalism, Shilts wrote three books. His first book, '' The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk'', is a biography of openly gay San Francisco politician Harvey Milk, who was
assassinated Assassination is the murder of a prominent or important person, such as a head of state, head of government, politician, world leader, member of a royal family or CEO. The murder of a celebrity, activist, or artist, though they may not have a ...
by a political rival, Dan White, in 1978. The book broke new ground, being written at a time when "the very idea of a gay political biography was brand-new." Shilts's second book, '' And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic'', published in 1987, won the Stonewall Book Award and would sell over 700,000 copies until 2004. The book made Shilts a trusted commentator on AIDS, to the point that he was the closing speaker at 1989's Fifth International AIDS Conference in Montreal''.And the Band Played On'' is an extensively researched account of the early days of the
AIDS epidemic in the United States Human immunodeficiency virus infection and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) is a spectrum of conditions caused by infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), a retrovirus. Following initial infection an individual m ...
. The book was translated into seven languages,School of Journalism and Communication Hall of Achievement
Retrieved on October 11, 2017
and was later made into an HBO film of the same name in 1993, with many big-name actors in starring or supporting roles, including
Matthew Modine Matthew Avery Modine (born March 22, 1959) is an American actor and filmmaker, who rose to prominence through his role as U.S. Marine Private/Sergeant J.T. "Joker" Davis in ''Full Metal Jacket''. His other film roles include the title character ...
, Richard Gere,
Anjelica Huston Anjelica Huston ( ; born July 8, 1951) is an American actress and director. Known for often portraying eccentric and distinctive characters, she has received multiple accolades, including an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award, as well as no ...
,
Phil Collins Philip David Charles Collins (born 30 January 1951) is an English singer, musician, songwriter, record producer and actor. He was the drummer and lead singer of the rock band Genesis and also has a career as a solo performer. Between 1982 and ...
, Lily Tomlin,
Ian McKellen Sir Ian Murray McKellen (born 25 May 1939) is an English actor. His career spans seven decades, having performed in genres ranging from Shakespearean and modern theatre to popular fantasy and science fiction. Regarded as a British cultural i ...
, Steve Martin, and Alan Alda, among others. The film earned twenty nominations and nine awards, including the 1994
Emmy Award The Emmy Awards, or Emmys, are an extensive range of awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international television industry. A number of annual Emmy Award ceremonies are held throughout the calendar year, each with the ...
for Outstanding Made for Television Movie. His last book, '' Conduct Unbecoming: Gays and Lesbians in the US Military from Vietnam to the Persian Gulf'', which examined discrimination against lesbians and gays in the military, was published in 1993. Shilts and his assistants conducted over a thousand interviews while researching the book, the last chapter of which Shilts dictated from his hospital bed. Shilts saw himself as a literary journalist in the tradition of Truman Capote and
Norman Mailer Nachem Malech Mailer (January 31, 1923 – November 10, 2007), known by his pen name Norman Kingsley Mailer, was an American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, activist, filmmaker and actor. In a career spanning over six decades, Mailer ...
. Undaunted by a lack of enthusiasm for his initial proposal for the Harvey Milk biography, Shilts reworked the concept, as he later said, after further reflection:
I read '' Hawaii'' by James Michener. That gave me the concept for the book, the idea of taking people and using them as vehicles, symbols for different ideas. I would take the life-and-times approach and tell the whole story of the gay movement in this way, using Harvey as the major vehicle.


Criticism and praise

Although Shilts was applauded for bringing public attention to gay civil rights issues and the AIDS crisis, he was also harshly criticized (and spat upon on Castro Street) by some in the gay community for calling for the closure of gay bathhouses in San Francisco to slow the spread of AIDS. Fellow Bay Area journalist Bob Ross called Shilts "a traitor to his own kind". In a note included in ''The Life and Times of Harvey Milk'', Shilts expressed his view of a reporter's duty to rise above criticism:
I can only answer that I tried to tell the truth and, if not be objective, at least be fair; history is not served when reporters prize trepidation and propriety over the robust journalistic duty to tell the whole story.
Shilts was also criticized by some segments of the gay community on other issues, including his opposition to the controversial practice of
outing Outing is the act of disclosing an LGBT person's sexual orientation or gender identity without that person's consent. It is often done for political reasons, either to instrumentalize homophobia in order to discredit political opponents or to com ...
prominent but
closeted ''Closeted'' and ''in the closet'' are metaphors for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender and other (LGBTQ+) people who have not disclosed their sexual orientation or gender identity and aspects thereof, including sexual identity and human ...
lesbians and gay men. Nevertheless, his tenacious reporting was highly praised by others in both the gay and straight communities who saw him as "the pre-eminent chronicler of gay life and spokesman on gay issues". Shilts was honored with the 1988 Outstanding Author award from the
American Society of Journalists and Authors The American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA) was founded in 1948 as the Society of Magazine Writers, and is the professional association of independent nonfiction writers in the United States. History The organization was established in ...
, the 1990 Mather Lectureship at Harvard University, and the 1993 Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists' Association. In 1999, the Department of Journalism at New York University ranked Shilts's AIDS reporting for the ''Chronicle'' between 1981 and 1985 as number 44 on a list of the top 100 works of journalism in the United States in the 20th century.


Illness and death

Although Shilts told ''The New York Times'' he had declined to be told the results of his HIV test until he had completed the writing of '' And the Band Played On'', concerned that the 1987 test result would interfere with his objectivity as a writer, he had earlier announced knowing that he was HIV positive since 1985. In 1992, Shilts became ill with ''Pneumocystis'' pneumonia and suffered a collapsed lung; the following year, he was diagnosed with Kaposi's sarcoma. In a '' New York Times'' interview in the spring of 1993, Shilts observed, "HIV is certainly character-building. It's made me see all of the shallow things we cling to, like ego and vanity. Of course, I'd rather have a few more
T-cells A T cell is a type of lymphocyte. T cells are one of the important white blood cells of the immune system and play a central role in the adaptive immune response. T cells can be distinguished from other lymphocytes by the presence of a T-cell rec ...
and a little less character." Despite being effectively homebound and on oxygen, he was able to attend the Los Angeles screening of the HBO film version of ''And the Band Played On'' in August 1993. Shilts died at 42 on February 17, 1994, at Davies Medical Center in San Francisco, California, being survived by his partner, Barry Barbieri, his mother, and his brothers. His brother Gary had conducted a commitment service for the couple the previous year. After a funeral service at
Glide Memorial Church Glide Memorial Church is a church in San Francisco, California, formerly a United Methodist Church congregation, which opened in 1930. Since the 1960s, it has served as a counter-culture rallying point, as one of the most prominently liberal chu ...
, Shilts was buried at Redwood Memorial Gardens in Guerneville alongside his long time friend, Daniel R. Yoder (1952–1995).


Legacy

Shilts bequeathed 170 cartons of papers, notes, and research files to the local history section of the San Francisco Public Library. At the time of his death, he was planning a fourth book, examining homosexuality in the Roman Catholic Church. As a fellow reporter put it, despite an early death, in his books Shilts "rewrote history. In doing so, he saved a segment of history from extinction." Historian
Garry Wills Garry Wills (born May 22, 1934) is an American author, journalist, political philosopher, and historian, specializing in American history, politics, and religion, especially the history of the Catholic Church. He won a Pulitzer Prize for Genera ...
wrote of ''And the Band Played On'', "This book will be to gay liberation what Betty Friedan was to early feminism and Rachel Carson's '' Silent Spring'' was to environmentalism."
NAMES Project The NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt, often abbreviated to AIDS Memorial Quilt or AIDS Quilt, is an enormous memorial to celebrate the lives of people who have died of AIDS-related causes. Weighing an estimated 54 tons, it is the largest piece ...
founder
Cleve Jones Cleve Jones (born October 11, 1954) is an American AIDS and LGBT rights activist. He conceived the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt, which has become, at 54 tons, the world's largest piece of community folk art as of 2020. In 1983, at the onset ...
described Shilts as "a hero" and characterized his books as "without question the most important works of literature affecting gay people." After his death, a longtime friend and assistant explained the motivation that drove Shilts: "He chose to write about gay issues for the mainstream precisely because he wanted other people to know what it was like to be gay. If they didn't know, how were things going to change?" In 1998, Shilts was memorialized in the Hall of Achievement at the University of Oregon School of Journalism, honoring his refusal to be "boxed in by the limits that society offered him. As an out gay man, he carved a place in journalism that was not simply groundbreaking but internationally influential in changing the way the news media covered AIDS." A ''San Francisco Chronicle'' reporter summed up the achievement of his late "brash and gutsy" colleague:
Perhaps because Shilts remains controversial among some gays, there is no monument to him. Nor is there a street named for him, as there are for other San Francisco writers such as
Jack Kerouac Jean-Louis Lebris de Kérouac (; March 12, 1922 – October 21, 1969), known as Jack Kerouac, was an American novelist and poet who, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, was a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Of French-Canadian a ...
and Dashiell Hammett. ... Shilts' only monument is his work. He remains the most prescient chronicler of 20th century American gay history.
In 2006, ''Reporter Zero'', a half-hour biographical documentary about Shilts featuring interviews with friends and colleagues, was produced and directed by filmmaker Carrie Lozano. Shilts is the subject of a 2019 biography, ''The Journalist of Castro Street: The Life of Randy Shilts'' by Andrew E. Stoner, released May 30, 2019 from the University of Illinois Press. In 2014 Shilts was one of the inaugural honorees in the Rainbow Honor Walk, a walk of fame in San Francisco's Castro neighborhood noting LGBTQ people who have "made significant contributions in their fields." In June 2019, Shilts was one of the inaugural fifty American “pioneers, trailblazers, and heroes” inducted on the National LGBTQ Wall of Honor within the Stonewall National Monument in New York City’s Stonewall Inn.


Bibliography

* ''Familiar Faces, Hidden Lives: The Story of Homosexual Men in America Today,'' by Howard J. Brown, M.D., Introduction by Randy Shilts, 1976 () * ''The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk,'' 1982 () * '' And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic (1980–1985),'' 1987 () * ''Conduct Unbecoming: Gays and Lesbians in the U.S. Military,'' 1993 ()


Further reading

* Andrew E. Stoner: ''The Journalist of Castro Street. The Life of Randy Shilts.'' University of Illinois Press, 2019, (paperback), (ebook)


References


External links


"Alband (Linda) Collection of Randy Shilts Materials"
at Calisphere
"AIDS at 25 – Reflections on reporter Randy Shilts,"
podcast by the San Francisco Chronicle *
Randy Shilts
on
glbtq.com glbtq.com (also known as the glbtq Encyclopedia Project) was an online encyclopedia of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer ( GLBTQ) culture. Launched in 2003, it was edited by Claude J. Summers, emeritus professor at the University of ...
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Shilts, Randy 1951 births 1994 deaths 20th-century American biographers 20th-century American journalists 20th-century American male writers 20th-century LGBT people AIDS-related deaths in California American gay writers American male biographers American male journalists Historians from Illinois Historians of LGBT topics Journalists from Illinois LGBT journalists from the United States LGBT people from Illinois LGBT people from Iowa Lambda Literary Award winners People from Aurora, Illinois People from Guerneville, California People with HIV/AIDS San Francisco Chronicle people Stonewall Book Award winners University of Oregon alumni Writers from Davenport, Iowa Writers from San Francisco LGBT historians National LGBTQ Wall of Honor