Randy Shilts

Randy Shilts
Shilts in the newsroom of the San Francisco Chronicle, 1987
Born	(1951-08-08)August 8, 1951 Davenport, Iowa, U.S.
Died	February 17, 1994(1994-02-17) (aged 42) Guerneville, California, U.S.
Occupation	Journalist, author
Alma mater	University of Oregon
Genre	History
Partner	Barry Barbieri

Randy Shilts (August 8, 1951 – February 17, 1994) was an American journalist and author. He worked as a freelance reporter for both The Advocate and the San Francisco Chronicle, as well as for San Francisco Bay Area television stations.

Born August 8, 1951, in Davenport, Iowa, Shilts grew up in Aurora, Illinois, 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, becoming an award-winning managing editor. During his college days, he came out publicly as a gay man at age 20, and ran for student office with the slogan "Come out for Shilts."

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. After several years of freelance journalism, he was finally 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." 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.

In addition to his extensive journalism, Shilts wrote three best-selling, widely acclaimed 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 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."