National Minority AIDS Council Building Healthier Communities

The statistics around HIV remain grim, and on January 14, 1986, Dr. Anthony Fauci (left) says in a New York Times article, "By 1996, three to five million Americans will be HIV positive and one million will be dead of AIDS". Little is said, however, about the impact of HIV/AIDS in communities of color.

 

Major milestones in the epidemic at this time include:

February 6, 1986: Reagan mentions AIDS in his Message to the Congress on America's Agenda for the Future.

May 1986: The International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses concludes that both the names LAV and HTLV-III were to be dropped and replaced by HIV, for human immunodeficiency virus.

 

June 23-25, 1986: At the 2nd International AIDS Conference, in Paris, FR, the Director of WHO announces that as many as 10 million people worldwide are infected with HIV.

 

August 1986: The federal government makes it illegal to discriminate against someone living with AIDS after a hospital dismissed a nurse diagnosed with AIDS and refused to offer him an alternative job.

 

September 1986: Clinical trials demonstrate that azidothymidine (AZT), a failed cancer drug created in 1964, inhibits HIV. Of the two groups in the trial, only one person receiving AZT had died at the end of six months, while 19 of those taking the placebo died. The clinical trial stops early because it was thought unethical to deny patients receiving the placebos to try AZT. Click here to view the ABC news story about AZT.

 

Texas drops plans to add AIDS to its list of diseases for which people could be quarantined, California votes against a similar proposed measure, Proposition 64.

 

Boston, MA and New Haven, CT spearhead the first needle exchange programs specifically geared toward preventing HIV transmission.

 

Women living with HIV/AIDS in New York City form the Women and AIDS Resource Network (WARN), headed by founding NMAC board member, Suki Ports.

Fall 1986 - NMAC Comes Together
Throughout 1986, a number of minority HIV/AIDS leaders meet to discuss the establishment of a national HIV/AIDS organization dedicated to the concerns of people of color, including: Paul Kawata, Gil Gerard, Calu Lester, Don Edwards, Timm Offutt, Norm Nickens, Craig Harris, Carl Bean, Suki Ports, Marie St.-Cyr and Sandra McDonald.

 

After a particularly heated gathering in the Circus Circus trailer park in Las Vegas, NV, during the American Public Health Association (APHA) meeting that fall, many in the group decide to leave. Those that still remain committed to the effort attended the APHA conference's first ever AIDS panel discussion.

 

No one of color had been invited to participate in the session, prompting Craig Harris, an African-American gay man living with AIDS, to rush the stage, shouting I WILL BE HEARD. He took the microphone away from Dr. Merv Silverman, who was then San Francisco Health Commissioner, and announced the formation of NMAC and the need to address the challenges of HIV/AIDS within communities of color.

 

The new Council's first order of business was meeting with US Surgeon General C.
Everett Koop while he was writing his historic report, Understanding AIDS.

 

Originally scheduled for just 15 minutes, Koop, who had not known about the disproportionate impact of HIV/AIDS in communities of color, sat riveted by NMAC's representatives for nearly two and half hours. The report would become the only publication, other than tax and census forms, to be mailed to every person in the United States.

 

Below is a picture from this historic meeting:

 

This photo was shared by Gil Gerald, former NMAC board member. Pictured, starting from the left, Gil Gerald, Reverend (now Bishop) Carl Bean, Fred Garnett, US Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, Suki Ports, Dr. Amanda Houston-Hamilton, and Paul Kawata.

 

Click here to read a letter of commendation from the National Coalition of Black Lesbians and Gays (NCBLB) sent to Koop following the release of the report. The NCBLB was headed by Executive Director, Gil Gerard, who played a pivotal role in the foundation of NMAC.

Despite public sympathy for Ryan White, stigma around HIV and AIDS remains a very real - and dangerous - problem for those living with and affected by the disease. No other story illustrates this better than that of the Ray brothers, Ricky, Robert and Randy. Like Ryan White, Ricky is banned from his Florida school and harassed constantly by his local community after his HIV status becomes public. The Ray's family home would be burned down by arsonists in 1987. (Ricky died of AIDS in 1992, and Robert, in 2000.) To the left, Randy Ray, the only surviving Ray brother, holds a book published by People magazine open to the page that shows the Ray brothers - Randy in striped shirt, Robert at top right and Ricky - at the beginning of their ordeal.

 

To raise awareness about the impact of HIV/AIDS and honor those who have passed, prominent gay-rights activtist, Cleve Jones, creates the first panel of what becomes the AIDS Memorial Quilt, in memory of his friend Marvin Feldman. Today, the organization that handles the quilt is known as The NAMES Foundation.

 

1986 ends with an additional 12,183 AIDS deaths and 19,404 diagnoses in the US, the cumulative number of US AIDS deaths that year was 24,842. NMAC mourns the passing of Calu Lester, a leading AIDS activist who worked closely with NMAC's founding board. The agency is also saddened by the loss of Fred Garnett, one of its founders.