Kiyoshi Kuromiya papers on HIV/ AIDS research and organizations Coll.18 Finding aid prepared by Celia Caust-Ellenbogen and Faith Charlton through the Historical Society of Pennsylvania's Hidden Collections Initiative for Pennsylvania Small Archival Repositories. Last updated on March 08, 2019. John J. Wilcox, Jr. LGBT Archives, William Way LGBT Community Center Kiyoshi Kuromiya papers on HIV/AIDS research and organizations Table of Contents Summary Information....................................................................................................................................3 Biography/History..........................................................................................................................................4 Scope and Contents....................................................................................................................................... 5 Arrangement Note..........................................................................................................................................8 Administrative Information........................................................................................................................... 9 Controlled Access Headings..........................................................................................................................9 Collection Inventory.................................................................................................................................... 11 Data files................................................................................................................................................ 11 Subject files............................................................................................................................................51 Critical Path AIDS Project Records......................................................................................................64 Personal papers...................................................................................................................................... 76 Anna Forbes records of the Working Group on HealthChoices and HIV............................................ 82 - Page 2 - Kiyoshi Kuromiya papers on HIV/AIDS research and organizations Summary Information Repository John J. Wilcox, Jr. LGBT Archives, William Way LGBT Community Center Creator Kuromiya, Kiyoshi Title Kiyoshi Kuromiya papers on HIV/AIDS research and organizations Call number Coll.18 Date [inclusive] 1990-2002 Extent 58 linear feet Extent 45 record cartons, 2 cardboard boxes, and 1 document box Language English Abstract Kiyoshi Kuromiya (1943-2000) was a Philadelphia-based activist who worked to better the lives of people living with HIV/AIDS. He created the Critical Path AIDS Project to provide free internet access and information on HIV/AIDS treatment. The bulk of the Kiyoshi Kuromiya papers on HIV/AIDS research and organizations, 1990-2002, is comprised of newspaper clippings, scientific articles, conference materials, and flyers collected by Kuromiya on HIV/AIDS treatments, topics, and organizations. There are also some records from Kuromiya's Critical Path AIDS Project, Kuromiya personal papers, and records from Anna Forbes from the Working Group on HealthChoices and HIV. - Page 3 - Kiyoshi Kuromiya papers on HIV/AIDS research and organizations Biography/History Kiyoshi Kuromiya (1943-2000) was a Philadelphia-based activist who worked to better the lives of people living with HIV/AIDS. He created the Critical Path AIDS Project to provide free internet access and information on HIV/AIDS treatment. Kuromiya was born in 1943 in a Japanese-American internment camp in Heart Mountain, Wyoming. After World War II, his family returned to Monrovia, California. Kiyoshi Kuromiya moved to Philadelphia in 1961 to study architecture under Louis I. Kahn at the University of Pennsylvania and remained in Philadelphia for most of his adult life. Kuromiya engaged in a life-long struggle for human rights as a civil rights, anti-Vietnam War, and homosexual rights activist. While a student at the University of Pennsylvania, Kuromiya was active in civil rights demonstrations. He protested restaurants refusing to serve African Americans by participating in sit-ins in Maryland along Route 40 in the early 1960s. He spent time in Montgomery and Selma, Alabama in the mid-1960s, where he worked with civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. Kuromiya was hospitalized in 1965 with head injuries sustained while leading a voter registration protest in Alabama. Kuromiya was an early participant in the burgeoning LGBT rights movement of the late 1960s. He participated in one of the first national homosexual rights demonstrations, held at Independence Hall, Philadelphia, in 1965. He was a founder of the Gay Liberation Front and spoke on homosexual rights before the Black Panther Party's Revolutionary People's Constitutional Convention in 1970. Also involved with the anti-Vietnam War movement, Kuromiya protested at the Pentagon Building in 1967, demonstrated at the Democratic Convention in Chicago 1970, and was arrested in Washington, DC in 1972 for anti-war protesting. In 1977 Kuromiya was hospitalized with metastatic lung cancer. During his hospitalization and recovery, Kuromiya discovered the work of R. Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983), the American author, designer, inventor, futurist, systems theorist, and architect known for popularizing the geodesic dome structure. Fuller was living in Philadelphia at the time. Kuromiya began working with him and is credited as "adjuvant" on four of Fuller's books: Critical Path, Grunch of Giants, Inventions, and Cosmography. Kuromiya was diagnosed with AIDS and began doing full-time AIDS work in the late 1980s. In 1988/1989 he founded the Critical Path AIDS Project, which applied ideas and strategies from Buckminster Fuller's 1981 book to the AIDS crisis. The project began as a newsletter about AIDS treatment that Kuromiya researched, wrote, edited, and distributed himself. The Critical Path AIDS Project grew to offer a 24-hour AIDS treatment hotline, a web hosting service for AIDS-related websites and listservs, and computer access for individuals in the Philadelphia area. Kuromiya was a founding member of the ACT UP/Philadelphia (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) and the first paid employee of We The People, a large, minority-run coalition organization for Persons With AIDS (PWAs). He served on many community and scientific advisory boards for HIV/AIDS research and programs, including the national AIDS Clinical Trials Group (ACTG), Levine Panel of the Office - Page 4 - Kiyoshi Kuromiya papers on HIV/AIDS research and organizations of AIDS Research, the National Minority AIDS Council, and the RAND Corporation. He presented at numerous conferences and taught numerous programs about HIV/AIDS. Among many other accolades, Kuromiya was honored with the Humanitarian of the Year award from Philadelphia Gay News in 1995, Civil Liberties Award from the Pennsylvania ACLU in 1996, and Ryan White CARE Act Award for 1995 from the Human Resources Services Administration. Kuromiya was a plaintiff in a successful American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) challenge of the constitutionality of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) in 1996. In that case, Kuromiya argued that the safer sex information provided by Kuromiya on the Internet to teenagers was, although sexually explicit, important for their health. Kuromiya was an advocate for the medical use of marijuana, especially for persons with AIDS wasting syndrome and chemotherapy treatment for cancer. He was a lead litigant in a 1999 class action challenge of United States laws on the therapeutic use of cannabis (Kuromiya et al. vs. United States). Kuromiya passed away in 2000 from complications of AIDS. The Critical Path Project still exists as of 2014 as a program of Philadelphia FIGHT (Field Initiating Group for HIV Trials). Since 2002, it has operated as a digital inclusion training and advocacy program that provides free internet access and computer training at public computer centers in low-income neighborhoods across Philadelphia. Bibliography: Kiyoshi Kuromiya et al. v. United States of America. United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania: Civil Action No. 98-3439 MK. Appendix 1: "Kiyoshi Kuromiya - Brief Bio." Kiyoshi Kuromiya Memorial Community. "Kiyoshi Kuromiya." Accessed December 6, 2013. http:// www.critpath.org/kiyoshi/kiyoshi.php. Martin, Douglas. "Kiyoshi Kuromiya, 57, Fighter For the Rights of AIDS Patients." New York Times, May 28, 2000. Accessed December 6, 2013. http://www.nytimes.com/2000/05/28/us/kiyoshi- kuromiya-57-fighter-for-the-rights-of-aids-patients.html Scope and Contents This collection consists of information gathered by Kiyoshi Kuromiya about topics and organizations relating to HIV/AIDS (human immunodeficiency virus infection / acquired immunodeficiency syndrome), records of Kuromiya's HIV education project "Critical Path AIDS Project," and some personal papers. Because Kuromiya both participated in numerous HIV/AIDS organizations and was active in gathering treatment information for his educational project, Critical Path, this collection provides an excellent overview of the landscape of HIV/AIDS research and activism in the 1990s. The focus is on Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, but the national and international impact of the HIV epidemic is also addressed. The collection is organized into five series: "I. Data files,"