{artsexylightbox}{/artsexylightbox} Bill T. Jones Bill T. Jones has never created a single work about AIDS. He will tell you that firmly, perhaps forcefully. But the facts that he is HIV positive and that he lost his partner in love and work to AIDS, infuse his choreography, making several of his breathtaking works metaphors for the …
{artsexylightbox}{/artsexylightbox} Juanita Millender-McDonald A Glamour magazine survey called her “one of eleven women who will change the world.” Bold initiatives have become her trademark. And not only is she a champion of her people, she’s also a fierce soldier in the battle against AIDS. Congresswoman Juanita Millender-McDonald may represent the citizens of California’s 37th congressional …
{artsexylightbox}{/artsexylightbox} Debra Fraser-Howze In the mid-1980s, then-U.S. Surgeon General Dr. C. Everett Koop warned the country, and Black leaders in particular, about the alarmingly high rates of HIV infections among African Americans. At the time, HIV/AIDS was thought to be a malady that only afflicted gay white men. As Black leaders across the country attempted …
{artsexylightbox}{/artsexylightbox} Patricia Broadbent “Don’t look at what you can die from. Look at how you can live.” Patricia Broadbent has spent a lifetime instilling this kind of positive attitude in herself and her family. Good thing. She’s living with cancer and three of her children are living with AIDS. She’s experienced a teacher spraying her …
{artsexylightbox}{/artsexylightbox} Hydeia Broadbent Hydeia Broadbent, as tiny as a finger snap, could barely see over the podium. But the little girl had a big message. “How many of you know someone with AIDS?” she asked the audience at one of her early speeches. “Guess what, you do know someone with AIDS. And you can be …
{artsexylightbox}{/artsexylightbox} David Satcher Anybody else would have headed for the door. The most contentious presidential election in modern times had just turned the White House over to a new group of social conservatives, and the Surgeon General’s position has always been a hotspot in America’s culture wars. For Dr. David Satcher, who had been appointed …
{artsexylightbox}{/artsexylightbox} Wilbert C. Jordon Leaving his office one evening, Dr. Wilbert C. Jordan was approached by a drug user who needed money. A conversation that began about a quarter evolved into a discussion about HIV and AIDS. Across the street was a mobile health unit. The addict told Dr. Jordan that the health unit’s workers …
{artsexylightbox}{/artsexylightbox} Eric Goosby In 1981, as an assistant clinical professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, Dr. Eric Goosby watched with alarm as the AIDS epidemic was born. Two years later, while working as Medical Director at the Southeast Health Center at San Francisco General Hospital, he began his …
Essence Essence, the preeminent magazine for African American women, has made a strong commitment to dealing with HIV/AIDS, a disease disproportionately affecting its very reader-base. AIDS is the #1 killer of Black women in the United States, aged 24-45. Among females, 72% of all new HIV cases are Black women. In response to the pandemic, …
{artsexylightbox}{/artsexylightbox} Jesse L. Jackson As founder and president of the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, the Reverend Jesse L. Jackson, Sr. developed the PUSH for Life HIV/AIDS program in March of 2000. The purpose of the program is to develop a political platform to assist the HIV/AIDS community in its efforts to garner broader support both nationally and …
