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go to makinggayhistory.com and hit the Patreon

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subscription button on our homepage. Thanks

1:15

so much. Now onto the episode you've

1:17

chosen to hear. Hi

1:22

history makers, Eric Marcus here. While

1:25

we're working on the next season of Making Gay

1:27

History, I wanted to share

1:29

an episode of a terrific new

1:31

series from the WNYC Studios podcast

1:33

Blindspot. It's hosted by Kai

1:36

Wright and it's called A Plague in

1:38

the Shadows. You've probably

1:40

already listened to our Making Gay History

1:42

series, Coming of Age during the AIDS

1:44

crisis. It told just a small

1:46

part of that time in history filtered through my

1:48

own memories. Blindspot covers a

1:51

lot of what we didn't. It

1:53

takes a deep dive into the history

1:55

of the AIDS crisis from the perspective

1:57

of marginalized communities that were deeply affected

1:59

by AIDS. but all too often

2:01

ignored. It's riveting,

2:04

infuriating, heartfelt, and

2:06

essential if you want a multidimensional understanding

2:09

of the AIDS epidemic. So

2:11

many indelible stories about people you'll

2:13

never forget. I'll

2:15

let Kai Wright take it from here. To

2:18

listen to the rest of the series, click

2:20

the link in the episode notes or subscribe

2:23

to Blindspot on your favorite podcast player. Hi!

2:30

Hello! Nice to meet you! Valerie

2:33

Reyes-H Because

2:56

you couldn't name it yet, you

2:59

called it the monster, or grid, or

3:02

in another part of town maybe the

3:04

gay plague. Mostly,

3:06

though, you avoided talking about it at

3:09

all until you

3:12

just couldn't anymore. People just

3:14

started like disappearing. Like one day

3:16

they were there and the next day they were

3:18

gone. These 20 people that used to hang out

3:20

in this building shooting up, they're

3:23

all gone. You know, like car

3:25

wash, bubble, tear sew, you know,

3:27

coco-wee. And like all

3:29

these people, they're all gone. Like where did they go?

3:33

It was pretty insane,

3:35

you know, and a

3:37

lot of people died. A lot. Like

3:41

when you say a lot, can you give me,

3:43

you know, how many people off

3:46

the top of your head do you think you knew

3:48

at that point who had died? At

3:51

least 75 people from the

3:53

block alone. I

3:56

was not expecting that. Yeah,

3:59

at least seven years. 25 people from

4:02

the block alone in about maybe a

4:04

period of 8 to 10 years.

4:21

We don't know the exact details

4:23

of when and where HIV

4:26

entered human life. The

4:28

particular onset of a pandemic that,

4:31

as of now, has

4:33

killed over 40 million people. But

4:36

we do know that Valerie's neighborhood

4:38

in Lower Manhattan was one of

4:40

the first places on the planet

4:42

that the virus began to spread

4:44

rapidly and to kill prolifically. And

4:48

that's for a lot of reasons.

4:50

There were the political and economic

4:52

choices that also allowed poverty to

4:54

spread across places like Lower Manhattan.

4:57

It was gritty. It was dirty.

5:00

Every block had abandoned buildings.

5:03

When I say abandoned, they were burnt

5:06

out buildings. They were empty lots.

5:10

And there were more intimate evils. Shame.

5:13

Depression. Addiction. Injection

5:16

drugs turned out to be one of

5:18

HIV's most efficient pathways in America. According

5:21

to one study, within a few years of

5:23

the epidemic's start, about half of all the

5:25

people who were injecting drugs in New York

5:27

had contracted HIV. My

5:30

husband at the time, you know, he got

5:33

HIV because he was, you know, he was

5:35

out in the street. He did a lot

5:37

of drugs. I wasn't an IV

5:39

drug user, but he was. By the time we had

5:41

the kids, he had stopped, but it was already too

5:43

late. I'm

5:48

Kai Wright. Welcome to Blindspot, the

5:50

plague in the shadows. Stories

5:52

from the early days of AIDS and

5:54

the people who refused to stay out

5:56

of sight. HIV

6:02

changed the world. It burst

6:04

on the scene in the early 1980s

6:06

as a mystery illness that is completely

6:08

confounded scientists. And it

6:10

killed, is still killing, tens of

6:12

millions of people. It

6:14

tore apart families and communities and

6:17

whole nations. It

6:19

has hung as a permanent

6:21

cloud over intimacy and love

6:23

and lust for generations of

6:25

people like myself. And

6:28

it is still with us. In

6:30

this series, we will revisit the AIDS epidemic

6:32

at its onset in the United States. You'll

6:35

hear from people who have lived it, who

6:37

struggled to sound the alarm when few others

6:39

would listen. Over the

6:41

next six episodes, we'll consider what could have

6:44

been different, what part of the pain and

6:46

the loss in this history could

6:48

have been avoided. I

6:57

was a street girl. You

7:05

know, I grew up right

7:07

on Avenue C. I'm a lower-sided

7:10

girl, native New Yorker. I'm a

7:12

New York Rican through and through.

7:14

Valerie, like any good New Yorker,

7:17

reps her neighborhood hard. You

7:19

know, there was Johnny on the Pony. We

7:21

used to play Skelsey. There was... She

7:23

loves it. Still, all these

7:26

years later, because it shaped her as

7:28

a Puerto Rican girl pounding the streets,

7:31

hanging around with a hot guy

7:33

in a sweet ride. He had

7:35

a really nice car. It was

7:38

like a muscle car, red with

7:40

black stripes. Like a 1970s. It

7:43

was a sweet ride. This

7:50

is Lizzie Ratner. She's from The Nation magazine. She's

7:52

the lead reporter on this project and is going

7:54

to join me in telling the story. What is

7:56

that laugh about? Oh, you know, I was just

7:59

thinking back to like... You know, just sitting

8:01

in the car and taking those rides

8:03

and stuff, you know. In the beginning,

8:05

it was sweet. It was shiny and

8:08

fun, but then later on, it wasn't

8:10

so fun. Heroin

8:14

was cheap and plentiful and,

8:17

as we know, highly addictive.

8:20

And it was just everywhere in Valerie's neighborhood.

8:22

It was surrounded by drugs, like, everywhere. Every

8:24

corner you went to, every other building you

8:27

went to, like, people were just out there

8:29

calling out the names of the drugs that

8:31

they were selling, and people were strung out.

8:33

I mean, there was just no ifs, ands,

8:36

or buts about it. There wasn't a family

8:38

that wasn't affected by it. Valerie

8:45

thinks, in all likelihood, she

8:47

contracted the virus herself back

8:49

in December of 1981, when

8:52

she was 16 years old, and not long

8:54

after she started riding around in that red

8:56

muscle car with the guys she would eventually

8:58

marry. I got with him in July of 1981. That

9:02

Christmas, I

9:04

had gotten so sick.

9:08

I remember, because I couldn't go anywhere.

9:10

It was, like, the worst flu I

9:12

ever had in my life. And

9:15

you think that was, like, the initial

9:17

HIV infection? I believe so. I

9:20

believe so. But it wasn't

9:22

until 1989 that she discovered

9:24

she's HIV positive. That

9:27

doesn't mean she had AIDS. That's when your

9:29

immune system fully breaks down. But

9:32

she had known for years

9:34

that something was up with

9:36

her body, with all these

9:38

constant, persistent infections. So I

9:40

figured, you know what? Let me get tested.

9:42

She went to the doctor's office and asked

9:44

for a test. But the

9:46

doctor hesitated, because they were following

9:49

the conventional wisdom. AIDS

9:51

was a gay disease. I

10:00

am touched. Hahaha. Valerie's

10:03

instincts were right. Did you have

10:06

a moment of freak out? Um, not

10:08

a freak out. It was more like,

10:10

uh, like, come here, virus. We're

10:12

gonna have a talk, you and I. We're

10:14

gonna suss this out. We're gonna come

10:17

to an agreement. I'm gonna let you live in

10:19

my body, and

10:21

you're gonna let me live. So,

10:24

we're gonna hang out, we're gonna do this

10:26

together. You get it? You got it? Good.

10:29

So, how early on did you have that? Oh, right,

10:31

right away. Within the first, like, 72

10:33

hours. And

10:36

so then, what did that mean, then, in

10:38

practice, in your life? I

10:40

guess, became a positive

10:42

woman. Hahaha. I'm

10:47

a positive woman in many

10:49

aspects. Seriously. Hahaha. In

10:52

many ways. Hahaha. Valerie

10:58

became an ace activist, working on addiction

11:00

and housing in her own community at

11:02

a group called Housing Works. And

11:04

she dedicated a lot of her life to

11:07

combating stigma. I got a T-shirt. Let

11:09

me turn you on, then. Being a

11:11

positive woman in public. She

11:14

took the virus on. And

11:16

you could say she won. But

11:19

that has not been the story for

11:21

everyone. For so many people,

11:23

for so much of this country's history

11:26

with AIDS, this epidemic

11:28

has been a story of avoidance.

11:31

After a break, the opening months

11:33

of AIDS in America and how

11:35

a set of perceptions emerged that

11:37

still define our response to it

11:39

today. The

11:53

AIDS epidemic. snuck

12:00

up on America at a particularly

12:03

opportune moment in our national history.

12:06

It's morning again in America. Today

12:09

more men and women will go to

12:11

work than ever before in our country's

12:14

history. The early 1980s marks the onset

12:16

of President Ronald Reagan's revolution, as it

12:18

was called. And this

12:20

famous campaign ad said it all.

12:22

This afternoon, 6,500 young men and

12:24

women will be married. We can

12:26

all prosper if we just agree

12:28

to look away. To

12:31

look away from the hard stuff, like

12:33

the deaths that were happening in Valerie

12:35

Reyes and men in his neighborhood. And

12:38

instead, to look ahead. And

12:40

with inflation of less than half of what

12:42

it was just four years ago, they can

12:44

look forward with confidence to the future. And

12:50

it was in this very moment that

12:52

a new horrible virus

12:55

began exploiting all the

12:57

social ills we chose to no longer

12:59

see. Our bigotries

13:02

and cruelties around sex

13:04

and race and gender

13:06

and poverty. The

13:10

virus announced its presence to mainstream America

13:12

in an article that appeared in the

13:14

back pages of the New York Times.

13:17

It was a single column story. If

13:20

I recall correctly, it was page 820. I

13:23

don't remember how many pages there

13:25

were. A story published on July

13:27

3rd, 1981, written by the OG

13:30

of medical journalism. I

13:32

am Dr. Lawrence K. Altman, a

13:35

former science writer and columnist

13:37

for the New York Times

13:41

and covered medicine for the New

13:43

York Times for nearly 50 years.

13:48

Larry Altman's July 1981 article

13:50

is often called the first media report

13:52

on what would become known as AIDS.

13:55

That's not true. The gay press had

13:57

already begun talking about an odd series

13:59

of illnesses. that were showing up in the

14:01

community. And there had been coverage in

14:03

California newspapers as well. But

14:05

certainly Altman's article in the New

14:08

York Times was a defining moment.

14:10

It broke the news to the widest

14:12

audience, made it a real thing. And

14:15

the way only a New York Times article can

14:17

do. The headline read,

14:19

rare cancer seen in 41 homosexuals. Outbreak

14:24

occurs among men in New York

14:26

and California. Eight died

14:28

inside two years. And

14:31

then the story began. Doctors

14:33

in New York and California have

14:36

diagnosed among homosexual men, 41

14:40

cases of a rare and often rapidly

14:42

fatal form of cancer. Now,

14:44

Larry Altman is writing here as

14:46

a kind of split personality, as

14:48

a reporter, but also a

14:51

doctor who practices and sees patients.

14:53

As a physician, I had

14:55

time to do medicine, take

14:57

time from the times to do that. And

15:00

as a doctor, his focus is infectious

15:02

disease, which is why

15:04

his antenna is up about this

15:07

so-called cancer. Over

15:09

the previous month, Altman had read

15:11

two notices about it in a

15:13

publication called the Morbidity and Mortality

15:15

Weekly Report, or the MMWR. That

15:18

wonky name is appropriate. It's kind of

15:20

a biz to biz trade publication, but

15:23

for public health. It's

15:25

what the federal government uses to

15:27

update local health departments and doctors

15:29

in real time about emerging trends.

15:33

Some doctors who were practicing in

15:35

cities with big gay populations, they

15:37

noticed all these young men suddenly

15:39

getting sick. They didn't know

15:41

exactly what they were seeing, but right away,

15:43

they put it in the MMWR. Heads

15:47

up, everybody. Something's happening. We

15:49

don't know what it is yet, but here's what

15:51

it looks like. And let's call it a cancer

15:54

for the time being. And

15:56

now, when Larry Altman read about these

15:58

symptoms, they sounded really familiar. He

16:01

had practice medicine at Bellevue, which is a

16:03

public hospital that treats a lot of poor

16:05

patients, and he says

16:07

he'd been seeing these symptoms there since

16:09

at least the late seventies. And

16:12

we couldn't determine the cause. And

16:14

we'd work in the medical

16:16

jargon. We'd work up every case to the

16:18

Hill doing all the tests

16:21

we knew how to do and still not

16:24

being able to determine what they had.

16:26

We knew what they didn't have, but

16:28

we didn't know what they had. And

16:31

when we went back and looked, it

16:33

was clear that they had what we now know

16:35

as AIDS. At

16:37

this stage, people weren't

16:40

seeing beyond gay men. What

16:44

about yourself? What were you seeing at that time?

16:46

I mean, the report you wrote was about the

16:48

41 men. Could

16:51

you see more than that? Yes,

16:53

because I had the experience at Bellevue,

16:57

and we had women who had

16:59

been former IV drug users or

17:01

injecting drug users, and

17:03

they had the same generalized swollen

17:06

lymph nodes that the men had.

17:09

So to me, I

17:12

didn't see that it would be limited to

17:15

the gay men population.

17:21

But that's not what he reported.

17:24

So I asked him why he didn't write about what

17:26

he was seeing in the newspaper. What

17:29

do you think if in the newsroom of 1981, if

17:31

you had said, no, I can see it's more than

17:37

these 41 gay men, and I

17:39

want to write about women who are

17:41

drug addicted that I've seen in the

17:43

past. I mean, how do you think

17:46

that would have been received amongst your

17:48

editors? I

17:50

think they would have to want to

17:52

know how that fit into a

17:54

bigger picture. Was

17:56

this just an oddity? And if

17:58

it's an oddity, then it's a big picture.

18:01

I don't think the Times would have been

18:03

interested. If you could show that it was

18:05

part of a broader pattern, then they presumably

18:07

would have been interested, but we didn't

18:10

have the evidence in. Nobody was reporting

18:12

it. There was no

18:14

data reported. So yes,

18:17

it would be in my mind, but

18:21

we weren't reporting theory. We were trying

18:23

to report the facts of what was

18:25

known. And

18:30

the facts were coming from

18:32

the MMWR, which focused only

18:34

on gay men. Do

18:40

you wrestle at all with the

18:44

limitation of reporting on

18:47

what the CDC is

18:49

establishing versus

18:52

being able to raise questions

18:54

about what you were seeing

18:56

at Bellevue that you couldn't

18:59

quite prove, but that you were like,

19:01

something else is going on here too? We

19:10

weren't writing personal opinion. We

19:12

were reporters. I was a reporter. That

19:15

kind of journalism didn't exist at that time.

19:18

I wasn't writing using the

19:21

word I and writing first-person

19:24

accounts. It was coming

19:26

off the news and explaining

19:30

what was going on. Larry

19:41

Altman's 1981 article was just

19:43

one link in a really

19:45

consequential feedback loop that locked

19:47

into place over the first

19:49

year or so of this

19:51

as yet unnamed epidemic. Each

19:55

time there was another public comment about

19:57

the gay cancer, doctors who

19:59

treated gay men would call the CDC

20:01

and say, hey, I have seen this

20:03

too. And this is a good

20:05

thing. The whole point was to find more cases, but

20:09

it also steadily narrowed the

20:11

focus onto who was affected

20:13

rather than what was happening.

20:16

People were looking where it was easy for them

20:18

to look. Phil Wilson has been

20:20

at the center of AIDS activism in

20:23

both the gay and black communities since

20:25

the opening days of the epidemic. I've

20:27

known him for decades and worked with him for

20:30

many years. And ever since the mid 80s,

20:32

he's been begging people to see

20:35

this epidemic in broader terms. You

20:38

probably heard me tell the story about

20:40

the guy who loses his keys.

20:43

So he loses his keys and he's looking and he's looking and

20:45

he's looking for his keys and he can't find his keys. And

20:47

another guy comes up and he says, what are you doing? He

20:49

says, I lost my keys. And the guy says,

20:51

well, where were you the last time

20:53

you saw your keys? And the guy says, about a

20:55

block down the road. And the guy says, well, why

20:57

are you looking here? And he says, because the lights

20:59

better. Now,

21:02

and so basically that's how we

21:05

were developing narratives. Most

21:12

people thought about this as,

21:15

well, it's just a gay disease,

21:17

you know, so we don't need

21:19

to worry about it. It's somebody

21:21

else's problem. This is Tony Fauci.

21:23

Yes, of COVID fame, but

21:25

Fauci was head of the federal agency

21:27

that leads research on infectious diseases for

21:29

almost 40 years. And

21:32

so his first public notoriety came as

21:34

the federal point person on AIDS. He

21:37

was at the scientific frontline from the start,

21:40

which means he's been rehashing what

21:42

went right and what went wrong

21:44

for decades, including this narrow focus

21:47

on gay men at the outset.

21:50

I see where you were going. And

21:52

he argues, look, you gotta remember

21:55

that this was an unprecedented epidemic.

21:58

When you're dealing with a new disease. it

22:01

unfolds in front of you in

22:03

real time. And what you

22:05

know, like in June

22:08

and July of 81, is

22:10

very different than what you learned in 82,

22:14

very different than what you learned in 83. And

22:17

very different than what we understand now,

22:20

40 some odd years later.

22:22

We experienced this as recently

22:25

as COVID-19, when

22:28

the first cases that came out, it

22:31

wasn't appreciated that it was very

22:33

easily transmitted from human to human. It

22:35

thought it was like a very inefficient.

22:38

Then after a few weeks to a month, we

22:40

found out it was transmitted

22:43

extremely efficiently. So what

22:45

it means is that you're dealing with

22:47

a moving target. And when

22:49

you finally get enough information, you

22:52

look back and you say, wow, how

22:55

long did it take the

22:58

general population, the

23:00

public health population and

23:02

other people to realize that

23:04

the target was moving and

23:07

expanding. As

23:12

for AIDS, here's what was officially known about

23:15

the epidemic in the United States by the

23:17

end of 1981. There

23:20

were 337 reported cases of people

23:22

experiencing a sudden collapse of their

23:25

immune systems. 130

23:27

of those people were already dead. For

23:29

the cases in which a person's sexual orientation was

23:32

known, a report that summer found

23:34

more than 90% were

23:36

gay or bisexual men, almost exclusively

23:38

in a few big coastal cities.

23:42

We now know for certain that

23:44

the epidemic was far wider than

23:46

gay men already, an estimated

23:48

42,000 people were

23:50

living with HIV in the US alone. But

23:54

for at least the first couple of

23:56

years after that, MMWR and Larry Altman's

23:58

New York Times article. That's

24:01

where the public conversation began and ended.

24:04

A mystery disease known as the Gay

24:06

Plague has become an epidemic unprecedented in

24:08

the history of American medicine. It's mysterious,

24:10

it's deadly, and it's baffling medical

24:13

science. It's a difficult disease control

24:15

in Atlanta, topping the list of

24:17

likely victims or male homosexuals who have

24:19

many partners. Which meant if

24:21

you didn't consider yourself part of

24:24

that group, you saw no reason

24:26

for this new health

24:28

scare to interrupt your morning in America.

24:32

And even among gay men, you

24:34

had to be a certain kind of homosexual

24:36

for this to be your problem. The

24:39

face of HIV AIDS at

24:42

that point in time was a white gay man. As

24:45

far as what you read about or heard

24:47

about, and we didn't

24:49

see ourselves in that information. This

24:52

is Gil Gerald. He

24:54

was an early and influential voice of

24:56

alarm about HIV and AIDS in the

24:58

gay community. But even if

25:00

you're familiar with the history of that part

25:03

of the epidemic, people like Larry

25:05

Kramer, you've likely never

25:07

heard Gil's name. I

25:11

was an accidental leader. I saw

25:13

myself as somebody who could do

25:15

the stuff that the charismatic leaders

25:18

didn't do. I thought,

25:20

okay, we need a constitution, right? We

25:22

need bylaws, right? I was willing to

25:24

do the paperwork. And while

25:26

Essex Simphill was out here writing waxing

25:28

poetics, you're like, well, I'll make sure

25:30

the lights are on. Yeah, that's exactly

25:32

right. By the late 1970s,

25:35

LGBT people from around the country

25:37

had created space for themselves in

25:40

big cities like New York and

25:42

San Francisco. Gil Gerald was

25:44

one of them. But for him,

25:46

and for many black people, the

25:49

mecca of queer freedom was Washington,

25:51

D.C. Clinton

25:53

was mired in a similar kind

25:56

of urban decay as Valerie Reyes

25:58

Jimenez describes in Lower Manhattan. But

26:01

in D.C., official terms in

26:03

the galact created space in

26:05

which a distinctly black zeitgeist

26:08

erupted. In politics,

26:10

in culture, in music, Washington

26:13

emerged in the 70s as

26:15

black America's capital city. George

26:18

Clinton even made an anthem for the

26:20

moment. What's happening,

26:22

C.C.? They still call it

26:25

the White House, but that's a temporary condition too. Can you

26:27

dig it, C.C.? Chocolate City.

26:33

And inside this milieu, a

26:36

specifically black queer movement emerged

26:38

as well. People

26:40

did refer to it as a, this

26:42

is a new Harlem Renaissance that it

26:44

was happening. What brought

26:46

you into organizing in the community

26:48

in the first place? Well, the best answer

26:50

I could come up with is nobody should

26:52

take as long as I did to figure

26:55

out that you're okay. Gil

26:57

was raised in Panama, a child of

26:59

relative privilege. His dad was a renowned

27:01

physician there, but his mom

27:03

was from New York City, and the family settled

27:05

in Harlem when Gil was a teenager. He went

27:07

to college in New York, and

27:10

it was the early 70s, the

27:12

opening years of the post-Stonewall gay

27:14

liberation movement, just heady days for

27:16

queer people lay ahead. And

27:19

young Gil, like probably millions of

27:21

other college kids at that moment, told

27:24

his parents, I'm gay. They

27:27

responded by sending him to a

27:29

psychiatrist. I went to see

27:31

Dr. Pauline Edwards in Harlem. She

27:35

examined me, and she saved my life.

27:38

On my exit interview, she said to me,

27:40

Gil, you have problems with being gay isn't

27:43

one of them. But my father

27:45

remained, he remained convinced that

27:47

I was sick for most of

27:49

his life. When he

27:51

was in his late 80s, he

27:54

finally invited my husband and myself

27:57

to Thanksgiving dinner. I

28:00

was then headed for 60 years

28:03

of age, okay? All right? Wow.

28:06

And so this fight went on. So I had a... I

28:09

felt a need to change the world.

28:11

Let's put it that way. No

28:13

kid, no person growing up needed to

28:15

go through that pain. And

28:18

so here I am. Here

28:26

I am. That's almost the mission

28:28

statement of the movement that Gil and

28:30

his friends initiated in D.C. They

28:33

looked around and they realized even

28:35

in George Clinton's Chocolate City, everything

28:38

about this exciting

28:40

post-Stonewall queer liberation

28:43

was really white. We were

28:46

confronted with the reality that

28:48

the political face

28:51

of the LGBTQ plus community

28:53

were white gay men. We

28:56

were invisible. The

29:01

community was no more racially integrated than

29:03

the rest of the country. What

29:07

were so-called gay meccas, the

29:10

DuPont circles, the West Village,

29:12

the Castro, those were places where we

29:14

were not very welcome in those parts of America,

29:17

where the gay white community had

29:19

gone for safety. We

29:22

were not welcome. Period.

29:28

And this segregation, these competing

29:30

and distinct versions of gay

29:32

liberation, this was the

29:35

context in which the new gay cancer

29:37

emerged in 1981. So

29:40

in Gil's circle, when the

29:42

news broke, what they heard

29:44

was white gay cancer. What

29:49

about in your own lives? Were

29:51

people seeing their black

29:54

gay male friends and lovers

29:56

and associates get sick?

30:00

epidemic visible to them yet? It was

30:02

not quite as visible. I mean, certainly

30:04

people felt very vulnerable at that point

30:06

in time if they in fact came

30:09

down with HIV. And

30:12

so families hid that. There

30:14

wasn't a whole lot of information about

30:17

people, you know, circulating in the community.

30:20

Gil remembers the moment he made

30:23

contact with reality though. It

30:25

was 1983, a year

30:28

in which the black LGBT organizing that

30:30

began back in the late 70s had

30:33

really matured. I mean, they were doing stuff like

30:35

getting meetings with Coretta Scott King. And

30:38

one evening, Gil was hosting a reception

30:40

for some black queer activists at his

30:42

place in D.C. Just

30:45

before the gathering that day, a white

30:47

gay activist pulled him aside. He

30:49

says, there's something you need to see.

30:52

There is something called the MMWR report

30:54

from the Centers for Disease Control. You

30:56

should see this. This is

30:58

something that you might want to bring to the

31:00

attention of the organization. This

31:03

latest report broke down the most recent

31:05

numbers on AIDS cases in the country.

31:08

And it said 26%, more than

31:10

one in four of the reported cases

31:12

were among black people. If

31:15

you compare that to the black share of the

31:17

overall population, that's more than double. Which

31:20

means even in the official

31:22

narrative, nevermind all the unreported

31:24

cases, the story of

31:26

AIDS was already about way more

31:28

than white gay men in a

31:30

couple of cities. But

31:32

nobody wanted to hear that. Certainly

31:35

not the people gathered at Gil's reception. I

31:38

read this report to them. I said, this is what

31:40

the report says. And

31:42

I was totally dismissed. Was

31:45

totally dismissed. I got told only if

31:47

you sleep with white men. You

31:50

know, they all spoke to the possibility

31:53

that this was a government

31:55

plot to change our sexuality.

31:58

It was the first indication to me that there

32:00

was a lot of work could to be done. So,

32:03

you know, some of the people who were

32:06

in that room became, by 1986, they were

32:08

really, really mobilized. But

32:12

by then, most of the room,

32:14

men in the room were infected in

32:17

most of the room. Most of

32:19

them are passed away, unfortunately. In

32:21

our bodies, AIDS represents a total collapse of

32:28

the immune system. The HIV and

32:31

AIDS epidemic reflected something similar in

32:33

American life, just a systems-wide failure. AIDS

32:39

was not just a medical

32:41

crisis. It was, and it remains, a social disease,

32:44

one that exploits the inequities

32:46

that already defined so much of

32:49

American life. We

32:51

literally had to convince the federal government

32:55

that there were women getting HIV.

32:57

In this series, you will hear

33:00

from extraordinary people, priests and doctors and

33:02

nurses and activists, people who were told

33:04

to stay out of sight, to

33:08

remain in the shadows of America's dawn, and who

33:10

refused. It

33:13

was activists. We

33:18

changed the world. I mean, stigma was

33:20

high. I mean, stigma was so

33:23

high that people were almost abused. They're people. They're not

33:25

drug users. They're not patients. They're

33:27

not hemophiliacs. They're people. Yes, we are

33:29

being victimized, but we are not victims.

33:33

We're models of resistance. I

33:35

remember one little boy said, if I didn't have

33:37

HIV, I wouldn't have met you guys. I was

33:39

like, I'm not going to be able to get

33:41

HIV. I'm going to meet you guys. Yeah.

33:53

One thing that I've been reminded of while

33:55

revisiting this history is that the people who

33:57

lived it, they are protective of it.

34:00

There are sacrifices that have never

34:02

been named, let alone celebrated, wounds

34:05

that have never healed. This

34:08

was evident when we sat down with

34:10

Dr. Margaret Haggerty, who ran the pediatrics

34:12

department at Harlem Hospital in the 1980s.

34:15

Well, what

34:17

are you going to do with this? When

34:19

you get all done, reach Evan. And

34:24

Peter says, what did you do with

34:26

AIDS? What is it you're going to

34:28

do with it? Or

34:31

what do you hope will happen from it? You know, I don't

34:34

know. I want to

34:37

make sure you're not exploiting. Yeah. I

34:40

can speak for me. I spent most of

34:42

my, from like 96

34:44

until probably about 2008. All

34:47

I did was report on AIDS. But

34:54

it was at a time when,

34:56

you know, people had decided, and I'm

34:58

gay, I'm a gay man, and people

35:01

had decided that the epidemic

35:03

was over. I don't know if you remember that New

35:06

York Times magazine covers piece in 1996, right

35:09

after the meds came out that said the end

35:12

of the plague. No,

35:14

I didn't clear it. And it just pissed

35:16

me off. I can imagine. That would

35:18

piss me off, too. But the

35:20

short story is that, you know, it became a

35:22

bit of my life mission to not to tell

35:24

the story that it wasn't over and it's not

35:26

over. And that there's

35:29

a lot to be learned, particularly about when

35:31

we think about the epidemic amongst black people

35:33

and poor people. And it's the farce

35:35

that I've gotten in my life to think about what I'm going to do

35:37

with it. But I just feel like I have to keep telling it.

35:39

Good enough. Good enough. Go and get through the day. Okay.

35:43

Let's start at the beginning. Please.

35:46

We go there next. Inside

35:53

a pediatric ward in central Harlem

35:56

on Blindspot, the plague in the

35:58

shadows. Blindspot,

36:25

The Plague in the Shadows is a

36:27

co-production of the History Channel and WNYC.

36:30

Our team

36:34

includes Emily Botin, Karen Froman,

36:36

Ana Gonzalez, Sophie Hurwitz, Lizzie

36:38

Ratner, Christian Reedy and myself

36:40

Kai Wright. Our

36:43

advisors are Amanda Aroncik, Howard

36:45

Gertler, Jenny Lawton, Mary Ann

36:47

McKeown, Yoruba Ritten and Linda

36:49

Villarosa. Music and sound designed

36:51

by Jared Paul. Additional music by

36:54

Isaac Jones. Additional engineering by

36:56

Mike Kuchman. Our executive producers

36:58

at the History Channel are Jesse Katz,

37:00

Eli Lehrer and Mike Stiller. Thanks

37:03

to Miriam Bernard, Lauren Cooperman, Andy Lancet

37:05

and Kenya Young. I'm

37:07

Kai Wright. You can also find me hosting

37:09

Notes from America on public radio stations each

37:12

Sunday. Check us out wherever you get your

37:14

podcasts.