Items

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  Letter: Gil Gerald to C. Everett Koop, October 24, 1986

  Letter commending Koop for his Surgeon General's Report on AIDS, and thanking Koop for his mention of the disease among racial minorities at the press conference announcing the report. Still, Gerald notes, the report itself did not address the disproportionate impact of HIV/AIDS on communities of color.
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  Frederick Garnett: Living with AIDS

  Address delivered by Frederick Garnett, a black man living with AIDS, at the National Conference on AIDS in the Black Community, on July 18, 1986. Garnett discusses racial disparities in the AIDS epidemic in Washington, DC, where he lives. He says that although African Americans make up half of the people with AIDS (PWAs) in the city, they are largely absent from clinics and support groups. He also discusses his decision "to live with AIDS rather than to shrink from it."
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  At Risk: AIDS in the Black Community

  Account of the National Conference on AIDS in the Black Community, held in Washington, DC on July 18, 1986. Includes statistics about the disproportionate impact of HIV and AIDS on African Americans, as well as the role of IV drug use and heterosexual transmission in the AIDS epidemic within black communities. Sessions at the conference stressed the need for culturally competent AIDS education for black communities, the lack of representation in gay and black media outlets of the epidemic among African Americans, and the need for black churches to respond to the disease.
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  Photo: National Minority AIDS Council meets with Surgeon General Koop, July 18, 1986

  Photo taken by Jim Marks of members of the National Minority Council on AIDS taken with Surgeon General Everett C. Koop during the National Conference on AIDS in the Black Community, on July 18, 1986. Gil Gerald and others remember the meeting as "one of the milestones in organizing NMAC," although the group already appears to have been using that name at the time of the conference. The National Coalition of Black Lesbians and Gays organized the conference, along with NMAC and the National Conference of Black Mayors as co-sponsors, and with a grant from the U.S. Public Health Service. Pictured from left to right: Gil Gerald, Reverend Carl Bean, Frederick Garnett, Dr. C. Everett Koop, Suki Ports, Amanda Houston-Hamilton, Paul Kawata.