“Black men loving Black men is a call to action, an acknowledgment of responsibility. We take care of our own kind when the night grows cold and
silent. These days the nights are cold-blooded and the silence echoes with
complicity.” Joseph Beam, Brother to Brother: Words from the Heart
I was 24 years old when I became infected with HIV. I’m 56 now. The journey to prepare this report has been a very personal one for me. I am among a small number of Black gay men who survived the darkest days of the AIDS epidemic. The first thing I did when we decided to write this
report was to take a long and hard look at two photographs hanging in the entryway of my house.
The first one is a photo of me with my friends Ken, Roger, and Steven. I am the only one of us still alive. The second photo is of me and my friend
David who died in 1998. The second thing I did was reread three very important books, In the Life: A Black Gay Anthology edited by Joseph Beam; Brother to Brother: New writings by Black Gay Men edited by Essex Hemphill; and Sojourner by the Other Countries collective.
All of these books were published between 1986 and 1993. As I reread
these anthologies, I was struck by how prolific Black gay writers were during the very worst years of the AIDS epidemic. It was as if they were writing for their lives. There were nearly 80 contributors to those three anthologies and over 30% of them are dead today.
I got involved in the fight against AIDS—the GRID, (Gay Related Immune Deficiency)—shortly after the first cases were diagnosed among five
white gay men at UCLA medical center in 1982. In the beginning, like most Americans, I believed that AIDS was a white gay disease. But very quickly, I was disabused of that notion. On the ground, a different story was being played out. In fact, from the very beginning of the epidemic, the proportion of cases among Black gay men was more than double our share of the national population. Today, HIV prevalence among Black gay men is roughly double the prevalence among white gay men.