THE POLITICAL CULTURE of AFRICAN AMERICAN AIDS ACTIVISM a Dissertation Submitted to the Temple University Graduate Board
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“DON’T WE DIE TOO?”: THE POLITICAL CULTURE OF AFRICAN AMERICAN AIDS ACTIVISM A Dissertation Submitted to the Temple University Graduate Board In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY by Dan Royles January 2014 Examining Committee Members: Beth Bailey, Advisory Chair, History David Farber, History Bryant Simon, History Heather Thompson, History Alondra Nelson, External Member, Columbia University, Sociology © Copyright 2013 by Dan Royles All Rights Reserved € ii ABSTRACT This project reveals the untold story of African Americans AIDS activists’ fight against HIV and AIDS in black communities. I describe the ways that, from 1985 to 2003, the both challenged public and private granting agencies to provide funds for HIV prevention efforts aimed specifically at black communities, and challenged homophobic attitudes among African Americans that, they believed, perpetuated the spread of the disease through stigma and silence. At the same time, they connected the epidemic among African Americans to racism and inequality within the United States, as well as to the pandemic raging throughout the African Diaspora and in the developing world. In this way, I argue, they contested and renegotiated the social and spatial boundaries of black community in the context of a devastating epidemic. At the same time, I also argue, they borrowed political strategies from earlier moments of black political organizing, as they brought key questions of diversity, equality, and public welfare to bear on HIV and AIDS. As they fought for resources with which to stop HIV and AIDS from spreading within their communities, they struggled over the place of blackness amid the shifting politics of race, class, and health in post-Civil Rights America. Adding their story to the emerging narrative of the history of the epidemic thus yields a more expansive and radical picture of AIDS activism in the United States. iii To those who have fought, and those who continue to fight. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Throughout this project, I have been blessed with generous support from a number of institutions. The Department of History at Temple University became my academic home in 2007, and gave me a place to hone my skills as a historian while providing me with fellowships, travel grants, and teaching gigs along the way. My committee members—David Farber, Alondra Nelson, Bryant Simon, and Heather Thompson—offered invaluable advice and direction throughout the research and writing process. I must also thank the Center for the Humanities at Temple for providing me with generous financial support over the course of two years, as well as biweekly seminars that helped me to see my work in a broader interdisciplinary context. The coffee wasn't bad, either. I am also grateful to the Center for Historical Research at The Ohio State University, and particularly to John Brooke and Chris Otter, for welcoming me and giving me the time and space to devote my full attention to writing and interviewing. Over the past six years, my advisor Beth Bailey has guided, challenged, and supported me as I struggled to define and carry out this project. I can’t imagine a mentor who is more helpful and hands-on than she is, and this project has many more “people doing things” because of her writing feedback. She has also been a tremendous advocate, which is evident in the amount of departmental and external support I was able to secure throughout this process. Thanks also to the John Hope Franklin Research Center for African and African American History and Culture and the Human Sexuality Collection in the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections at Cornell University for providing me with research v travel funding. Steven Fullwood, Josue Garcia, Rebekah Kim, Jennifer Thompson, Wesley Chenault, Susan Malsbury, Tom Whitehead, and Brenda Marston helped me find excellent archival material at various institutions. Fellow graduate students at Temple were at once wonderful colleagues and treasured friends. Roberta Meek, Susan Brandt, Abby Perkiss, Matt Johnson, and Brenna O'Rourke made the experience far more pleasurable than it would have been otherwise. Lindsay Helfman, Alex Elkins, and Melanie Newport saw me through tough moments, and listened to more than their fair share of dissertation-related angst. Other friends made my life happier just by being in it. Meg Welsh was an awesome roommate. Evie Caldwell and April Burnette Caldwell have made the past half of my life immeasurably better by being a part of it. Dressing up with Sarah Sridasome for Becky Bamberger’s holiday party is the highlight of my year. Naoko Kozuki has known me since we were eight years old, which is a testament to her fortitude and grace. I have laughed more with Jenny Thai than maybe anyone else on Earth. Jacqui Shine, you are a guru—never stop doing you. Throughout this process, my family has been wonderfully supportive, even when they didn’t quite understand what I was doing, or why. I could not have asked for a better gift than my aunt Nadine’s sense of humor. My grandfather Kent’s stentorian voice will be good for large lecture halls. My grandmother Jean has always been generosity and unconditional love incarnate. My stepmother, Leslie, has been both a parent and a friend, and is always willing to split a bottle of wine and have a deep conversation. I could not be more proud of my sisters, Annelise and Renee, and I can’t wait to see them become adults. My parents, Melanie and Ed, have taught me innumerable lessons, both explicitly vi and by example, about doing what you love, doing it well, and doing it with compassion. They’re who I want to be when I grow up. In the last year of this project, Nick came into my life. He encouraged me, kept me on track, and made me countless dinners when I couldn’t spare the time or mental energy to feed myself. He’s made me happier than I ever thought I could be, and I love him more than I thought possible. Finally, I must thank all of the oral history narrators who generously shared their stories with me. I hope that I have done them justice here. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT....................................................................................................................... iii DEDICATION................................................................................................................... iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...................................................................................................v INTRODUCTION MORE THAN MAGIC.......................................................................................... ix CHAPTER 1. “A DISEASE, NOT A LIFESTYLE”: RACE AND AIDS IN THE CITY OF BROTHERLY LOVE .......................................................................1 2. “BLACK MEN LOVING BLACK MEN”: AIDS AND BLACK GAY MEN’S POLITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS......................................................52 3. “WE’VE BEEN DOING THIS FOR A FEW THOUSAND YEARS”: THE NATION OF ISLAM’S AFRICAN AIDS CURE..................................92 4. “THERE IS A BALM IN GILEAD”: AIDS ACTIVISM AND THE BLACK CHURCH ........................................................................................127 5. “STOP MEDICAL APARTHEID FROM PHILADELPHIA TO SOUTH AFRICA”: ACT UP PHILADELPHIA AND GLOBAL TREATMENT ACCESS ...............................................................................173 CONCLUSION................................................................................................................224 BIBLIOGRAPHY............................................................................................................230 viii INTRODUCTION MORE THAN MAGIC “Because of the HIV virus I have obtained, I will have to retire from the Lakers today,” Earvin “Magic” Johnson told a room full of reporters on November 7, 1991. Outside the Great Western Forum, where the press conference was in progress, fans gathered to grieve the loss of the beloved basketball star. Kenya McClendon of Inglewood told Richard Stevenson of the New York Times, “I came here because I was shocked... I wanted to actually see if it was true. It’s still hard to believe. Magic Johnson, of all people. He’s the last person I would expect to be HIV positive.”1 Johnson, a gifted and determined player with a mega-watt smile to match his athletic prowess, cut a larger than life figure at six feet nine inches tall, on and off the court. His popularity and rivalry with the Boston Celtics’ Larry Bird had helped revive the flagging National Basketball Association during the 1980s, bringing him millions of adoring fans and millions of dollars in product endorsement deals. Although rumors of his bisexuality swirled around gay enclaves like Key West and West Hollywood, where some residents reportedly sported t-shirts with the phrase “I love basketball; I had a Magic Johnson,” Johnson himself insisted that he had contracted the virus through promiscuous sex with women, not men. Sexual gossip notwithstanding, when AIDS activists, basketball players, and Johnson himself emphasized that “If Magic Johnson can get the AIDS virus, then anybody can get it,” they stressed precisely how different 1 Richard W. Stevenson, “Magic Johnson Ends His Career, Saying He Has AIDS Infection,” New York Times, November 8, 1991, page A1. ix Johnson, an African American paragon of athletic masculinity, seemed from the most common images of people with AIDS—skeletal white gay men wasting away in the hospital or protesting in the street, and to a lesser extent, junkies who had shared