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0:31

What is your favorite music?

0:37

I couldn't find the actual first copy,

0:39

but I found a copy of Black

0:41

Age Anthology In The Life, edited by

0:43

Joe Bean. What year is In

0:45

The Life published? It

0:48

had to be 86 because Joe wrote in

0:50

my book, If You Can't Dance,

0:52

What Kind of Revolution Is It? Joseph

0:55

Bean. And

0:59

he wrote to George. In

1:01

The Life, an anthology of Black

1:04

gay writing. It now

1:06

feels like a darkly ironic

1:08

name for Joseph Bean's anthology, which

1:10

is a foundational text in the

1:12

Black queer arts movement of that

1:14

era. Because

1:17

so much of 1986 in that

1:19

community was actually about death.

1:24

George Bellinger Jr. is one of

1:26

the frankly few people in that

1:28

scene who lived to tell about it.

1:31

I was a dancer. I went to

1:33

fashion school and I had a little

1:35

BA in education. I was

1:38

a dancer, choreographer, teaching dance. His

1:41

best friend was a notable writer

1:44

named Craig G. Harris. And

1:46

he wrote for this anthology, In The Life. He

1:49

contributed a poem that offers a real snapshot

1:51

of 1986. I

1:54

asked George to dig out his old copy

1:56

of the book and read Craig's poem. It's

1:59

called Cut. off from among their

2:01

people. This poem

2:03

talks about a family

2:06

going to a funeral of a

2:08

son who died of AIDS and how they respond to

2:10

it. The

2:14

mother was radiant and too

2:17

composed. She wore

2:19

a black on black silk dress which

2:21

tied at the neck with a large

2:23

bow and ended below the knee in

2:25

a wide knife pleats. Her

2:28

salt and pepper hair pulled onto

2:30

her. The poem goes on to

2:32

describe the whole family's insistent cold

2:34

dignity in this kind of detail

2:37

until arriving at the deceased's lover.

2:40

Jeff unconsciously reached

2:42

out to touch

2:45

the cuticle casted but

2:47

was intercepted by the mother. She

2:49

whisked her hand away from

2:51

the freezing politeness and said, he's

2:53

gone now. The

3:00

same freezing tone she'd used when

3:02

Jeff told her the man they

3:04

both loved was dying of AIDS.

3:07

The same she gave him when they met

3:09

for the first time at his hospital deathbed.

3:12

The family here explicitly requested that

3:14

no flowers be sent. Jeff

3:17

had ignored that request and sent 11

3:19

to flowers which had always been his

3:21

lover's favorite. He had

3:23

not been allowed to assist in any of

3:25

the burial cans. He had been

3:27

told quite diplomatically by

3:30

his lover's sister that the

3:33

family could not be so

3:35

insensitive as to accept his

3:37

generous offering. A

3:41

final polite rejection. They

3:45

would have arranged for the funeral and internment

3:47

and notified him of the details. That

3:52

kind of sums up how we address

3:54

HIV in our community. There

3:57

are a lot of us who were lovers or

3:59

good friends. Were.

4:01

Dismissed to the size. And

4:04

when sooner was to place

4:06

we were not included. And.

4:11

Craig. Did not wonderful his

4:13

life. Where his funeral happened

4:15

the range of the include

4:17

many of us he created

4:19

community. And

4:22

he lived in a community.

4:24

He died with community. Craig.

4:33

Harris died four years after he published

4:35

his poem. That. Age thirty three.

4:39

And. In those four years, he

4:41

helped his community shift from morning

4:44

das. To. Fighting for life.

4:50

Guild. Gerald, that activist who was

4:52

living in D C, who we

4:54

met back in episode one. He

4:56

remembers a catalytic moment for that

4:58

shift. It was also Nineteen Eighty

5:00

Six, It

5:05

was a process of the American

5:07

Public Health Association. It was their

5:09

national convention and it was being

5:12

held in Las Vegas. Next Speaker:

5:14

Who will the states hugely important

5:17

gathering for a hugely important group

5:19

A National Healthcare. We have a

5:21

very distinguished panel today that has

5:24

thousands of people that come to

5:26

this conference. You know people across

5:29

the spectrum of disciplines. A dealing

5:31

with up Public Health and Health

5:33

were talking. about a big huge

5:35

conference for year now and back argue

5:38

and for they were gonna dedicate a

5:40

marquee conversation at the end of the

5:42

of that to discussing eight gil he

5:44

got the importance of this he'd been

5:47

sounding the alarm about aids and it's

5:49

media for years at this point so

5:51

he a bunch of queer activists decided

5:53

to meet up there including craig harris

5:56

earlier in the days we had gone

5:58

and the as a group and

6:00

gone to a meeting of

6:02

the National Black Nurses Association.

6:05

And there was a general feeling

6:07

that we weren't taken seriously. This is not our

6:10

issue. So Craig

6:12

was pissed. He was really pissed. It's

6:14

a pleasure to call to order this closing

6:16

general session. And when the big aid

6:19

session itself finally came, they

6:21

did not see themselves represented on the

6:23

panel. After sitting through many

6:25

speakers and over an hour of talking,

6:29

Craig rushed the stage with a number of other

6:31

people, and

6:33

he grabbed the

6:35

microphone. Good morning. My

6:37

name is Craig Harris as the

6:39

interim chair of the National Minority

6:41

AIDS Council. He

6:43

got to the stage and he

6:46

was already up to steps before people like, like, who

6:48

was this man and why are you going up the

6:50

stairs? We'll be glad to let you, glad

6:54

to let him talk for a minute so that we will

6:56

have a chance to complete our session. And Craig

6:59

Harris gave this calm, polite

7:01

presentation, explaining the contrary to

7:03

popular belief, this epidemic was

7:05

rapidly becoming uniquely intense among

7:07

people of color, and

7:09

they were dying. Because they have been led

7:12

to believe by the public health system and

7:14

all forms of media to believe that

7:17

people of color are not suffering from

7:19

AIDS in significant numbers. In

7:21

reality, almost 40% of people

7:24

diagnosed with AIDS in the country at

7:26

that very moment were either

7:28

black or Latino. And

7:30

he told them, maybe you notice this

7:32

disparity if you let us speak more

7:34

often. Please remember

7:37

that as you are victims

7:39

of a society which is

7:41

institutionally racist, heterosexist, and classist,

7:44

you may benefit from the experience and

7:46

input of your black, Latino, and Asian

7:49

peers who are on the front line

7:51

fighting inadequate health care for our communities.

7:53

Thank you very much. I'm

8:03

highway. This is blind spot The

8:05

plague in the shadows from History

8:08

Channel and W N Y C.

8:10

Of all the people living with

8:12

Hiv in the United States today,

8:15

forty percent of them are still

8:17

black. Says a

8:19

wildly disproportionate share of this

8:21

epidemic. It's an imbalance. The

8:23

developed right at the start

8:25

and grew steadily year after year.

8:27

in Nineteen Eighty Six Crates, Harris

8:30

and Guild year old George Ballenger

8:32

and a tight knit group of

8:35

gay men in black cities

8:37

all around the country monster

8:39

Movement. In response to this

8:41

fact, The

8:43

movement required them to confront big

8:45

important institutions like The American Public

8:48

Health. And admit

8:50

they had to stare down racism and

8:52

the broader Lgbtq. Perhaps.

8:56

The most pressing and consequence of

8:58

challenge of kind of the most

9:00

difficult one to name is the

9:02

one that angered Craig Harris so

9:04

much when he met a black

9:07

nurses the one see lyrically described

9:09

in his poem for the Life

9:11

They had to deal with the

9:13

rejection of their own community. Because

9:16

when the Aids Epidemic struck,

9:18

a black community that had

9:21

spent generations learning to take

9:23

care of ourselves through all

9:25

of the horrors we had

9:27

already overcome in American history

9:29

simply struck back from this

9:32

particular threat. By.

9:37

It's not only that were

9:39

not responding. Ah, you know

9:41

there's a dismissal of the

9:43

impact of this on black

9:46

communities. Cathy. cohen is

9:48

a political scientist at university of

9:50

chicago and in the late nineteen

9:52

nineties she published a definitive study

9:54

of the black communities response to

9:56

the epidemic it had been her

9:58

dissertation because see like Craig Harris

10:01

and George Bellinger, was a queer

10:03

Black person living in New York during that

10:05

pivotal time in the late 80s. You

10:08

know, we saw the emergence of ACT

10:10

UP, and that looked like a

10:12

predominantly white gay organization

10:14

that was demanding attention.

10:17

But I didn't see a similar

10:19

response in the Black community, and

10:22

I could point to the Civil Rights

10:24

Movement before and beyond as

10:27

moments of kind of collective resistance on the

10:29

pair of Black people. But I

10:31

was like, what is happening here?

10:37

In this episode, we take up

10:39

Cassie's question, what was happening in

10:41

the Black community? We'll

10:43

try to answer it by delving into

10:46

one neighborhood, the world just outside the

10:48

walls of Harlem Hospital, where

10:50

we spent time back in episode two. Harlem

10:54

has been a global center of

10:56

Black culture and politics for over

10:58

a century, so I

11:01

talked to a guy who maybe

11:03

knows its politics better than anybody

11:05

alive today. I'm

11:08

David A. Patterson, a recovering

11:10

governor, and

11:12

happy to be here. New

11:15

York's first Black governor and a scion of

11:17

Harlem's political elite. His father was one of

11:19

the most influential political players in all of

11:22

New York for much of the 20th century,

11:25

and it's from that vantage that David

11:27

Patterson watched the AIDS epidemic unfold. Governor

11:31

Patterson, do you remember the first

11:33

time you heard of AIDS? I

11:37

actually do. It was in the morning. I

11:40

was listening to the morning news, and

11:43

they said that there

11:45

had been a death that

11:47

was attributed to the AIDS

11:49

virus. And I'd

11:52

never heard of the AIDS virus. And

11:55

I think I went to work and someone, you

11:57

know, in a conversation, said, you know, this is

11:59

very serious. And the fear is

12:01

that it might get around. But

12:06

to understand Black Harlem's response, you

12:08

can't start with HIV and AIDS.

12:11

You gotta first understand the mindset among

12:13

the most civically engaged people in the

12:15

community at the time that the virus

12:18

began to spread. What

12:21

did people care about? Homelessness. That

12:23

was a big issue. And

12:26

service dumping, like taking

12:28

all the agencies that

12:30

you don't want in your neighborhood and putting

12:32

them in Harlem, and a sewage

12:34

treatment plant that had been pushed all

12:37

up the West Side and landed in Harlem because

12:40

the community didn't have the political

12:43

might to stop it. In

12:47

short, they wanted respect. They

12:50

were tired of being treated like

12:52

a ghetto. Many residents were strivers

12:54

and considered themselves upstanding citizens. And

12:57

they wanted to be treated as such by their government. And

13:00

frankly, people had chips on their shoulders

13:02

about this. Governor

13:04

Patterson is kind of famous for

13:06

how much he enjoys dishing about

13:09

the eccentricities of political life. And

13:12

he's got this story from his own

13:14

initiation into Harlem politics that gives you

13:16

a sense of the vibe at the time. It

13:22

was 1985, and he had signed up

13:24

to help raise money for David Dinkins,

13:26

who was running to become Manhattan's borough

13:28

president. Dinkins would of course

13:30

go on to make history as the city's first

13:33

black mayor later in the 80s. But

13:35

Patterson remembers an event during that 1985 campaign. They

13:39

had to meet with a particularly cantankerous neighborhood

13:41

club. I was in Harlem, something rather club.

13:44

And nobody wanted to go. So they sent

13:46

me, who was the fundraiser? So

13:48

I don't know what the issues are in this campaign,

13:50

but I go up there and I mean, everything I

13:52

said to them was wrong. They

13:55

said, what's today that comes after Tuesday? And

13:57

I said, Wednesday? What makes you think you could

13:59

come in here and say a thing? like that. They

14:01

were just ridiculous. The

14:05

subtext here is important, but

14:07

people in this club wanted respect from

14:09

the city and its leaders, and

14:12

the fact that David Dinkins sent

14:14

a young David Patterson to talk

14:16

for him instead of showing up

14:18

himself was plain disrespectful.

14:22

But as Patterson's leaving the stage, an

14:24

older woman chimes in with one last

14:26

point. She tells him, I'm not

14:28

going to be for Deacon, so I'm disgusted that he

14:30

sent you instead of

14:40

showing up himself. But I'm going to tell you

14:42

something, young man. I like the

14:44

way you sat there and answered the questions, and

14:46

you were clearly being insulted at times, but

14:48

you just kept giving me answers. That's

14:51

the kind of temperament that I'm

14:53

looking for an elected official. Three

14:55

weeks later, the state senator, Leon

14:58

Boggs, passed away. It was kind

15:00

of unexpected. The late

15:02

Percy Sutton called me up and said, if I were

15:04

you, I'd run for that office. I

15:07

said, I have to

15:09

go back and take the bar exam. He says

15:11

to me, and he had a distinct way of

15:13

talking. He said, by the

15:15

time you complete the bar exam, the

15:18

position will no longer

15:20

be available. Can you

15:22

believe this? So I

15:24

run. And this

15:28

is how in 1985, David

15:31

Patterson began serving as Harlem's

15:33

gregarious state senator, an

15:36

office he would hold for more than 20 years. He

15:39

understood something important about his

15:41

constituents. The people who were

15:43

doing the most to keep the community's

15:45

institutions alive were sensitive about

15:48

how the rest of the city saw

15:50

them in their neighborhood. And

15:52

that sensitivity about respect, it

15:54

was directed at power brokers,

15:56

yes, but not only at

15:58

them. The black

16:01

community I think is misunderstood in

16:04

other parts of the city and even other

16:06

parts of the country. The black

16:09

community is largely conservative. Churchgoing,

16:11

family building. And

16:14

intensely ambitious. I

16:16

think there were people who, you

16:19

know, they worked hard, they were starting to get

16:21

to places, and they,

16:24

at times, probably felt

16:27

that there was irresponsibility in the

16:29

community that was holding them back. In

16:32

AIDS, it was still

16:35

very much considered an epidemic

16:37

of irresponsible people with no

16:39

self-respect, or mischievous gay men

16:41

and drug users. And

16:44

as Kathy Cohen has observed, this

16:46

was a central issue for the

16:48

black middle class. I think

16:51

it goes back to this question of who

16:53

we understand as deserving and who

16:56

we want to center our politics around. For

17:05

Patterson, it was a couple of years

17:07

into his tenure as Harlem State Senator,

17:09

when you notice something wasn't quite right

17:11

in the community's narrative about this. I

17:14

read in The New York Times that

17:17

the prevalence of AIDS in the

17:19

black community had now usurped the

17:22

gay community. It was 1987. Just

17:25

a year after Craig Harris stormed that stage

17:27

at the public health conference, he

17:30

and a bunch of other queer activists

17:32

had created the National Minority AIDS Council,

17:34

among other new groups that focused on

17:37

the black epidemic. And

17:39

this was all as a way to

17:41

engage black leaders like David Patterson. And

17:43

around that time, the

17:46

Manhattan Cable television would

17:49

give each of the legislators a

17:51

show per year. So you

17:53

got to do one show for the year. So

17:55

I decided to do my show on the AIDS

17:57

crisis at the White House. and

18:00

how there didn't seem to be any response

18:02

from the leadership in the black community. But

18:05

when he earnestly hit up all the usual

18:07

suspects to come on TV and talk with

18:09

him about it, he got

18:11

a rude surprise. Nobody

18:14

wanted to come on. And

18:16

usually, you know, being on

18:18

TV, even if it's a cable show, you know, there

18:20

were plenty of people. Then when he found out what

18:23

I wanted to talk about, they didn't want to do

18:25

it. But he got it

18:27

booked and he had the conversation and his

18:29

office phones started blowing up from

18:32

other parts of the city. Gay

18:34

and AIDS activists who were like, yeah, man, join

18:36

the fight, let's go. In

18:39

Harlem itself, amongst your constituents

18:42

in Harlem, how did they react? I think

18:44

the constituents in Harlem were like, you

18:47

know, you're probably

18:49

right. We're

18:51

not gonna cheer for you, but we're not gonna

18:53

bother you. Which

18:56

frankly, was a victory because there

18:58

was one very important constituency in

19:00

Harlem and in many black neighborhoods

19:03

that actively discouraged any conversation

19:05

about AIDS or the irresponsible

19:07

people who it was most

19:10

visibly killing. Let me

19:12

just say the first issue that

19:14

we had was the resistance

19:18

of the black clergy to get involved because,

19:20

you know, two thirds of them thought, well, you know,

19:23

it's a sin and that's what, yeah, Mr. Sinners. You

19:26

know, God hates homosexuals or God hates you

19:29

because you, you know, doing drugs or

19:32

this is a wrath of God or

19:34

whatever negative, destructive messaging

19:36

that they got. Most

19:38

times they gotta find the

19:41

pulpit, the most influential place

19:44

in our community. Coming

19:47

up, one woman's crusade, a convinced black

19:50

clergy, that they had to lead, follow,

19:52

or get out of the damn way.

19:55

My work with the church was

19:57

not only my comfort zone, It

20:00

was where I was able to release

20:03

doing something about the situation.

20:22

Blindspot is supported by HousingWorks. HousingWorks

20:24

was founded by a small group of

20:27

AIDS activists in 1990. And

20:29

today is one of the largest

20:31

community-based organizations in the country, serving

20:34

tens of thousands of New Yorkers

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21:15

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eshop.housingworks.org and use coupon

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code BLINDSPOT for 20% off your purchase. Heads

21:24

up that there is a mention of suicide coming up

21:26

in this part of the episode, so please take care.

21:28

And a reminder that you can always find help for

21:30

you or your loved one by

21:33

dialing 988 for the National Lifeline. That's 988 to

21:35

get help. Pernessa

21:40

Seal is today

21:42

something of a celebrity in Black Church circles, but

21:45

back in the late 1980s, she was a naive kind of woman. to

22:00

add a place newbie in Harlem working

22:03

at Harlem Hospital collecting epidemiological

22:05

data on AIDS. This

22:07

is before AZT. So

22:10

this was really in

22:12

the beginning of this was

22:14

the what do we do time. You know

22:16

what she'd come up from Lincolnville, South Carolina

22:18

and her faith was a big part of

22:21

her life. But she didn't

22:23

know a thing about New York. So she ended

22:25

up going to church way out in Brooklyn. The

22:28

Brooklyn Truth Center and I had

22:30

a little idea then to have a cultural arts

22:32

Institute. I was always having a little

22:34

ideas. She searched

22:36

the city for special people to help out.

22:40

And one of those people I found

22:42

was Lionel Stubblefield who

22:45

was a great baritone who lived

22:47

in Harlem. Lionel

22:49

agreed to lend a hand and before

22:51

he knew it he was also the

22:53

church's music director. But now that has

22:55

an effect on people you always kind of do more than

22:57

you think you're gonna. Lionel

23:00

and I became real good friends. We

23:03

both lived in Manhattan and he would

23:05

get a car service to Brooklyn and

23:07

he just really taught me a whole

23:09

nother way that I could actually get

23:12

a limousine service. That's on Sunday morning.

23:14

We weren't just catching the train. But

23:19

one day all of a sudden something

23:22

about her friend changed. Lionel

23:24

just started losing a lot

23:26

of weight quickly. And

23:30

one Thursday evening for

23:32

choir practice he did not come. He did not

23:34

show up. And

23:36

a group of choir members

23:39

went up to his place up

23:41

on a hundred and something something street to

23:44

see about him that night and

23:46

found him slumped over in his

23:48

chair. He had

23:51

passed away. And

23:57

then I had a violin teacher called

23:59

me up. one night and said,

24:01

uh, Pernessa heard that Lionel died of

24:03

AIDS. And

24:06

I was like, well, I think so. He said,

24:08

I'm gonna tell you if I, if I ever get that,

24:10

I'm just gonna kill myself. I'm just gonna kill myself.

24:14

And, um, and

24:16

guess what? A couple of months later, he

24:19

went to the roof of his building and

24:21

jumped and killed himself. Pernessa

24:30

also witnessed the growing horror of

24:32

the epidemic through her work at

24:34

Harlem Hospital meeting patients who had

24:36

AIDS. My work took me

24:38

on the floor and, um, and

24:40

people wanted to be, they wanted

24:43

to be visited. They want someone to pray with

24:45

them. They wanted someone to hold their hand. And,

24:47

and I'm like, where's the church? Cause

24:49

I'm looking at the church that I grew up

24:51

in in Lincolnville. When you're sick, you

24:53

know, mama in the past and them, they

24:55

go, they rushed into the hospital and

24:58

that was just not happening. Pernessa

25:05

Phil was a social worker at Harlem Hospital with me.

25:07

He worked at Harlem Hospital with me. You know, we

25:09

worked in the same program together. So we knew each

25:12

other. She was my buddy back in the day. Maxine

25:16

Freire is the pediatric nurse from Harlem

25:18

Hospital who we met back in episode

25:20

two. Like Pernessa, faith

25:22

is a huge part of Maxine's

25:24

life. So I met

25:27

her in the basement

25:29

room of her church,

25:31

one of Harlem's most

25:33

historic congregations. First AME

25:35

church Bethel. Since she was a

25:38

kid, Maxine's been deeply involved in the place

25:40

and she began trying to build an eighth

25:42

ministry there early in the epidemic. She

25:45

remembers the first time she tried to hold

25:47

meetings after Sunday service to just talk about

25:49

who in the church needed help. People

25:51

didn't come. So what I did was,

25:54

um, there was a bulletin board

25:56

up here and I put a sky and I

25:58

had a lot of stars. And

26:00

so I tell people to confidentially, if they

26:03

knew anybody with HIV or wanted to pray or put a star in

26:05

the book, it wasn't boring. So the next week

26:07

I came out, it was full. It

26:10

was full of stars. So they didn't want to

26:12

talk about it, but they had people who were

26:14

infected or affected by HIV. It

26:18

was an insult. If you were – the

26:21

stigma of being HIV positive is that you were a

26:23

drug addict, right? If you weren't

26:25

a drug addict, then how did you get HIV? You

26:28

were gay. You were gay. If

26:30

you weren't gay, you were a prostitute,

26:32

a drug addict or something like that.

26:35

And so that meant your whole family was a

26:37

disgrace. People in church were

26:39

supposed to be perfect, you know, saved and never

26:42

doing anything wrong or never did anything wrong. But,

26:44

you know, you saved because you did do something wrong

26:46

when you came to church. That's why you came here,

26:49

right? You got it saved. So,

26:54

yeah, they didn't want to talk about it at all because it's just –

26:58

I mean, it really is. Let's think about

27:00

it as a hierarchy of respectability.

27:03

Cathy Cohen, again, she's the political

27:05

scientist who studied the black political

27:07

response stage. You know, the

27:10

hierarchy, I think, had everything to do first

27:12

with do we respect

27:14

this group? We supposedly care about children,

27:16

so they're going to be higher up

27:19

on this hierarchy. And

27:21

were there behaviors, something

27:23

that we might label as intentional,

27:26

in terms of leading to

27:28

HIV and AIDS? Are you infecting

27:30

black communities and our

27:33

respectability, right? As

27:35

we seek to comport ourselves in

27:37

a way that

27:39

shows the world that we're deserving

27:42

of equal rights. In

27:44

her book, Cathy writes about a poster

27:46

that someone was pacing up around the

27:49

neighborhood in the mid-80s. It asks,

27:52

when will all the junkies die so

27:54

the rest of us can go on

27:56

living? It

28:01

is this idea that in fact we

28:03

can't live our lives, we can't

28:05

be free, we can't have the

28:07

mobilization that we deserve because

28:10

those damn drug users

28:13

threaten us and they threaten us in multiple ways.

28:15

They threaten us in terms of how we're represented

28:18

but at a kind of local level they

28:20

threaten us because in fact they might rob us

28:22

for our money. They might

28:24

be my brother or my uncle or my

28:26

second cousin who I am tired of. But

28:30

absolutely, I'm tired of you coming

28:32

to mom and asking her for

28:34

money. I'm tired of you stealing

28:36

things. I'm tired absolutely and I

28:39

think that's part of how they land

28:41

at the bottom or

28:43

near the bottom of the hierarchy, absolutely.

28:49

But so Pernessa Seale, the social worker

28:51

at Harlem Hospital, the black

28:54

church had long been the first

28:56

responders of caretaking in the community.

28:58

And there just was no way we were

29:01

going to confront this epidemic effectively as long

29:04

as pastors trafficked in these ideas

29:06

about who did and did not

29:08

deserve care. So

29:10

she decided to do something about it. Everybody

29:13

told me to go to Reverend

29:16

Dr. Preston R. Washington's Church, Memorial

29:18

Baptist Church. And

29:20

I went and I stood in

29:22

this long line after church just

29:24

to shake his hand. And

29:27

when I got up to him I

29:29

said, Dr. Washington, I am Pernessa Seale

29:31

and we are having a

29:33

Harlem week of prayer for the healing of

29:35

AIDS. I'll never forget it because we was

29:38

me and the Lord. She

29:41

managed to convince 50 faith institutions in

29:43

the neighborhood to come together, march

29:46

around Harlem Hospital and pray for

29:48

the healing of AIDS. It

29:51

was the beginning of a ministry

29:53

that carries on today that has

29:56

converted one pastor after

29:58

another into a welcoming rather

30:00

than a damning force in the Black community,

30:03

there are now thousands of Black

30:05

faith institutions all around the world

30:08

in Pernessa's coalition. And one

30:10

of my strategies was not to mobilize

30:12

the pulpit, but to mobilize the pew,

30:14

because I knew if I mobilized the

30:17

pew, the pulpit would follow. I

30:21

was Pernessa's trainer before there was a problem

30:23

because Pern... That's George Bellinger

30:25

Jr. again, who was in that movement

30:27

of queer artists who started pushing the

30:29

community to face up to the epidemic

30:31

in the mid-'80s. He went

30:33

to work for a group that trained social workers

30:35

at Harlem Hospital on how to deal with AIDS.

30:38

He met Pernessa out of training, they

30:40

became friends and collaborators. He

30:43

says he knows the secret to her success

30:45

with churches. The epidemic

30:47

finally touched enough families that more

30:49

and more mothers got tired of

30:51

being judged when their kids got

30:54

sick. And so several times

30:56

where the mother's board had to pull a

30:58

couple of passes back and say, no, we're

31:00

not having this conversation. You are not gonna

31:03

talk about my child. And if

31:05

you continue to do that, this is one

31:07

person's money you will not continue to get.

31:10

Not only my money, my support. And

31:12

when Sister Mary stops coming to church

31:14

and everybody's... You start sitting in the

31:17

second row, you go, why

31:19

she ain't come no more? And then she said,

31:21

well, child, things are different. How important of

31:23

a change do you think that made in

31:25

the sweep of the

31:28

black community's response to AIDS and as a consequence,

31:30

the country's response to AIDS? It

31:32

made it palatable that it wasn't

31:35

just taking care of the

31:37

person that was impacted and died.

31:39

It was also how their family was

31:41

treated. It was also what services the

31:43

mama needed. It changed the way people

31:45

looked at each other. Matter

31:48

of fact, a woman came

31:50

to my office about two years ago and

31:52

she said, you don't know me, but I

31:54

was at your first Harlem Weaker Praise Inn.

31:56

I said, really? She said, I was a

31:58

funeral director. I said, really? And she

32:01

said, did you know that all the funeral

32:03

directors was at the first Harlem Week of

32:05

Prayer? I said, no, I did not know

32:07

that. She said, yes. She

32:09

said, Reverend Dr. Wyatt T. Walker called

32:12

all of us and mandated that

32:14

every one of us come to

32:16

that event. Because at that time,

32:18

none of us were bearing people

32:20

with HIV and AIDS. And she

32:23

said, I cannot

32:25

tell you how much repenting

32:27

I do every day

32:30

because I hate how

32:32

I responded to AIDS back in the

32:34

80s and 90s. And

32:37

she can't go back. And she's in a different

32:39

place today, but she cannot go back and fix

32:41

it. I

32:45

always remind people that there are two

32:48

crises at the very least, right?

32:50

There is the AIDS crisis, and there's the

32:52

Reagan crisis. Cathy Cohen

32:54

says black leadership from national

32:56

civil rights groups on down

32:58

to local pastors, they

33:00

were all focused on a cascading set of

33:02

problems, the crack epidemic, growing

33:05

poverty, and a president who introduced the

33:07

phrase welfare queen to our political vocabulary.

33:09

This wasn't just a president. This was

33:11

a president who came in with the

33:14

agenda of really dismantling

33:16

state support and using

33:19

any additional state support to

33:21

implement a kind of system

33:23

of hyperpolicing, of mass incarceration,

33:25

of the demeaning and demolishing of

33:27

black communities. And I think very

33:29

quickly, black leaders understood that they

33:31

were under attack, and Reagan was

33:33

the focus of their attention. So

33:37

here you have a community in

33:40

which the most influential people in

33:42

the most important institutions are feeling

33:44

attacked by a distant hostile government

33:47

on one end and undermined

33:49

by the vices of their neighbors

33:51

and family members at the other

33:53

end. And they

33:56

carry that baggage into what has to

33:58

be one of the most consequential. debates

34:00

of the epidemic. How

34:03

to stop HIV from spreading through

34:05

used needles. One of the primary

34:07

causes of new infections among black

34:09

and Latino people. So

34:14

in 1986 New York

34:18

state officials proposed

34:20

a pilot program of needle exchanges.

34:23

And it

34:26

was controversial. A needle

34:28

exchange is a place where injection drug

34:30

users can go to safely get rid

34:32

of their used works and pick up

34:34

clean needles instead. New

34:37

York was one of 11 states in which it

34:39

was illegal to have needles in your possession and

34:42

that's one reason that lots and

34:44

lots of people shared the same

34:46

needle. They were a scarce resource.

34:50

HIV loved this fact. At

34:52

one point half of all injection drug users

34:54

in New York City were HIV positive. Almost

34:57

entirely due to people sharing needles. So

35:01

in 1986 the City Health Department

35:03

decided to at least pilot an

35:05

officially sanctioned needle exchange program. This

35:08

was a huge victory. It was to

35:10

be the first publicly run needle exchange

35:12

in the country. Kathy

35:14

Cohen says they were not ready for the

35:17

pushback. Maybe for the people

35:19

who could only see the positive

35:21

aspects of this program they weren't

35:23

prepared for black leaders to

35:25

stand deeply in opposition to

35:28

the needle exchange program. One

35:34

of the pilot locations was to be

35:36

in Harlem which made perfect sense from

35:38

an epidemiological standpoint. From a

35:41

political standpoint it could not have been a

35:43

worse fit. Remember the vibe in

35:45

Harlem at the time was pay

35:47

me some damn respect and stop

35:49

dumping all your problems here. So

35:52

the fight was on. There were a

35:55

range of reasons that people

35:57

oppose needle exchange. Some

35:59

looked historically and said we've seen

36:01

this before with Tuskegee, right, where

36:03

it's basically an experiment on black

36:05

people and back then it was

36:07

black men and sis, right. Some

36:10

people at a different extreme

36:12

called it genocidal, that this was a

36:14

way in fact to promote drug

36:17

use in the black community. And

36:19

there were just kind of key people across

36:22

the black community that were opposed to

36:24

this. So

36:30

the first opposition came from people

36:33

who in a kind

36:35

of paranoid way thought that the virus

36:37

was being shifted, you know,

36:39

out of the white community into the black community.

36:42

That wasn't former Governor David

36:45

Patterson's objection, but he did

36:47

oppose needle exchange. We

36:50

in my office opposed the

36:52

needle exchange for a different reason. We

36:54

opposed the needle exchange because

36:56

we thought that they were shifting

37:00

one disease for

37:02

another one. He felt like they

37:04

should be worried about the problem of

37:06

addiction itself, not how to manage around

37:08

addiction. And that's an idea

37:11

that Patterson and many other black

37:13

leaders had learned from a really

37:15

influential doctor in Harlem, a guy

37:17

named Benny Prim. I started working

37:19

very closely with the Centers for

37:21

Disease Control on their advisory committee

37:24

and with the Congressional Black Caucus.

37:26

Benny died in 2015, having spent

37:28

more than 60 years as

37:30

a deeply respected voice in public

37:33

health generally and among traditional black

37:35

leadership specifically. He was

37:37

a national authority, including on AIDS.

37:40

And I was chosen to go on President

37:43

Reagan's Human Immunodeficiency Virus Epidemic

37:45

Commission. But Dr. Prim did

37:47

not like this needle exchange

37:50

idea, which is interesting because

37:52

his whole career had been built around

37:54

standing up for drug users. No

37:57

lobbyists for people who are dealing with

37:59

drug abuse. particularly in the African

38:01

American community. And I'm one

38:03

of those lobbyists for that population, and

38:06

I'm not gonna give that up. He

38:08

began his career at Harlem Hospital in the 1960s

38:12

as an anesthesiologist in the emergency

38:14

department. He noticed that 80% of

38:17

all people coming into the ER

38:19

were there for drug-related issues, which

38:22

meant the ER was just constantly

38:24

treating secondary problems, gunshot wounds, overdoses

38:26

and stuff like that without

38:28

touching the root, which was addiction.

38:32

So Benny started researching addiction, and

38:34

that put him in the middle

38:36

of the community's debate over drug

38:38

use for decades. But

38:40

it's through those battles that he actually

38:42

won a lot of respect from black

38:45

leadership. And that's also why

38:47

they considered him a trusted source on

38:49

how to deal with AIDS. But

38:52

you know what? In addition

38:54

to all that kind of stuff about

38:57

his resume, people just really like Benny Primm.

38:59

I mean, there was just something about

39:01

him that grabbed you. Maybe

39:04

it was the clothes. I rarely saw

39:06

him wear the same thing twice,

39:09

and I had a relationship with him over 25 years.

39:12

Dr. Larry Brown was Benny's protege

39:15

in his addiction work. It

39:17

was suit and tie, two-piece

39:19

or three-piece, either

39:22

a straight tie or a bow tie.

39:24

He was always dressed so Natalie,

39:26

right? With the salt and pepper

39:28

mustache. This is Benny's

39:31

daughter, Janine Primm-Jones. She

39:33

thinks part of her father's famous

39:35

charm was that for a doctor

39:37

in a three-piece suit, he was

39:39

unexpectedly cool. He would talk

39:41

about these cats in Harlem and hanging

39:43

out with them, what it

39:45

was like in Europe, doing

39:48

some translation for the modern

39:50

jazz quartet traveling around with them,

39:53

and what a wild time that was. He

39:56

could work a room with these stories. As

39:58

a speaker. He

40:01

was incredible and

40:03

he never talked down to people.

40:06

I've always felt that Dr. Prem,

40:08

more than many physicians, was a

40:11

political being. He, in fact, understood

40:13

the politics of how to get

40:15

things done. By

40:17

the 1980s, Binney had made real

40:19

progress in his mission to focus

40:22

everybody on addiction itself rather than

40:24

the downstream problems that come from

40:26

drug abuse. And

40:28

then, suddenly, a virus

40:30

started killing people in his clinics. As

40:33

always, his instinct was to engage. He

40:36

had to look at how the gay guys were doing

40:38

at downtown. My father

40:40

started to see that

40:42

the white gay community was

40:46

not just acknowledging the deaths because

40:48

that's important, but also deciding that they

40:51

had to do something about it. That

40:54

was a provocation. He wanted to do the

40:56

same thing for black drug users in Harlem,

40:59

and he wanted to learn from the gay activists.

41:02

But Janine says he first had to

41:04

confront some of his own demons. I

41:07

think it was really hard for him. The

41:09

black community wasn't necessarily

41:12

thinking about gay

41:14

folks and what they do behind

41:16

closed doors. The way

41:18

that I know that my father was uncomfortable

41:22

with it was that I have

41:24

somebody very dear to me, and

41:26

she started living with a woman. My

41:29

father realized that, and

41:32

he was afraid for me to

41:34

be too influenced by the lesbian

41:37

lifestyle that he didn't really want

41:39

me to be with them anymore.

41:42

So he forbade me to visit them.

41:46

And I visited them secretly,

41:48

and he got used to

41:50

it, but I think it was really hard

41:52

for him. Janine feels

41:55

like it was truly just a

41:57

blind spot, despite all of Benny's

41:59

worldly life. and suave,

42:02

he was still a product of his

42:04

generation, and he just hadn't had enough

42:06

exposure to out queer people. But

42:09

of course, being the politically savvy

42:11

charmer that he was, Benny never

42:13

let on about any kind of

42:15

discomfort he may have felt. I

42:20

just got chills just thinking about Benny. Benny was

42:23

such an amazing person. Phil

42:25

Wilson was a young black gay activist

42:28

at the time. He was part of

42:30

that cadre of queer activists from around

42:32

the country who had begun pushing the

42:34

community on AIDS. They branched

42:36

out from talking to each other and

42:38

connected with straight allies like Prenessa

42:40

Seale and Benny Prim.

42:43

I just remember being in

42:45

this room in Washington, DC, and

42:48

there's all these queer

42:50

folks and Benny. And

42:53

Benny is there in his bow tie and

42:56

his suit, looking like

42:58

the deacon at the church

43:00

or the undertaker, all those

43:02

traditional black

43:04

male images, and all

43:06

these queer folks. And

43:09

he was absolutely

43:11

in it. And

43:14

I felt safe with him in the room. And

43:17

it reminded me that our families

43:20

cannot love us if

43:23

they don't know us. And

43:26

it reminded me that if we were gonna

43:28

be successful, that

43:31

we had to introduce ourselves to

43:34

our communities. We

43:37

had to let them know that we were there, and

43:40

we had to do it in a fashion that

43:42

made it clear that we weren't

43:44

asking to be a part of the community.

43:47

We were a part of the community, full stop.

43:53

Although Phil never noticed any hesitation from

43:56

Benny Prim about sexuality, it

43:58

was clear he did have a block. when it

44:00

came to the idea of needle exchange. When

44:02

we got to the issue

44:05

around needle exchange and risk

44:07

reduction in the drug user

44:09

space, he was like, no,

44:12

because what he saw that

44:14

as being is a way

44:16

to exacerbate the problem in

44:20

black communities. Phil realized they

44:22

had work to do with this hugely

44:24

influential man. And so I

44:27

began to just

44:30

talk with Vinnie about his

44:32

concerns and fears. And

44:36

my leading point was

44:39

our job was to, at

44:42

a minimum,

44:44

do triage. You

44:46

know, that we had to figure out how

44:48

to keep people alive until we

44:51

could do better. And

44:53

it worked. Dr. Prim

44:56

moved to the needle

44:59

exchange that it could be helpful, that

45:01

it wasn't going to solve the whole problem. But

45:04

we don't want to lose more people

45:06

than we're losing in the death

45:08

rate and the comparison of the death

45:11

rate in the black community,

45:13

as opposed to the gay community or

45:15

just the entire white community from

45:17

this source was demonstrable. Vinnie

45:22

Prim's shift in opinion about needle exchange

45:24

was without hyperbole. One of the more

45:26

pivotal moments in the black political

45:28

response stage, it directly converted David Patterson and other

45:31

leaders. And

45:35

more than that, it gave people

45:38

like Phil and Prenessa Seal an opening

45:40

on AIDS generally. So he had to

45:42

grab a toss. So he had

45:44

to grab a toss. You know, when

45:46

we were talking with the folks

45:48

at the NAACP and the Urban League and the Congressional

45:51

Black Caucus and all of that, those

45:53

are his folks. They

45:55

were my parents, but those are his folks.

45:57

So his gravitas made all the difference. in

46:00

the world. Needle

46:05

Exchange did eventually become legal in New

46:07

York, and it would turn

46:09

out to be one of the most

46:11

effective HIV prevention tools in the history

46:13

of the epidemic. But

46:15

it took a long time to get there. Six

46:19

years passed between the time the city first

46:21

considered a pilot program in Harlem back in

46:23

1986, and when

46:26

drug users could finally go to a

46:28

publicly funded spot and get clean

46:30

needles. And

46:32

that's kind of the story of this epidemic. Change

46:35

that came too slow. And

46:38

Phil Wilson argues it was probably

46:40

not until after the turn of

46:42

the century that the black community

46:45

really, truly mobilized. What

46:49

do you think is the consequence of how long that took? I

46:53

think the consequences of it is

46:55

how many of

46:57

us died in the meantime. That's

47:00

the consequence. Had we

47:03

been able to turn that

47:05

tide earlier, there

47:07

are untold thousands,

47:10

probably millions of

47:13

folks that might

47:15

not have died. It

47:27

is important to note that it did

47:29

not have to be that way. I

47:31

didn't want my brother Carlos to

47:34

just be one more on the heap

47:37

of a pile of people. And I also didn't

47:39

want the community to just be unremembered. Next

47:42

time on Blind Spot, we travel to

47:44

the Bronx and meet someone who did

47:47

not wait for permission to save lives

47:49

with clean needles. Thanks

47:53

for watching. I'll see you next time. Bye-bye. Blind

48:00

Spot, The Plague in the Shadows is

48:02

a co-production of the History Channel and

48:04

WNYC Studios in collaboration with

48:06

The Nation magazine. Our

48:08

team includes Emily Botin, Karen

48:10

Fruman, Ana Gonzalez, Sophie Hurwitz,

48:13

Lizzie Ratner, Christian Reedy, and

48:15

myself, Kai Wright. Our

48:17

advisors are Amanda Aroncik, Howard

48:19

Gertler, Jenny Lawton, Mary Ann

48:22

McCune, Yehuba Ritten, and Linda

48:24

Villarosa. Music and sound

48:26

designed by Jared Hall. Additional music

48:28

by Isaac Jones. Additional engineering by

48:30

Mike Kuchman. Our executive producers

48:32

at the History Channel are Jesse Katz,

48:35

Eli Lehrer, and Mike Stiller. Thanks

48:37

to Miriam Bernard, Lauren Cooperman, Andy

48:39

Lansett, and Kenya Young. I'm

48:42

Kai Wright. You can also find

48:44

me posting notes from America, live

48:46

on public radio stations each Sunday.

48:49

Or check us out wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks

48:52

for listening.