The Waning Days Of Harlem's Mount Morris Baths

While going through some old manila file folders, I found a handwritten draft of a letter-to-the-editor written on canary yellow paper and dated June 25, 2001. I don't recall what publication prompted me to write it. As far as I know, it was never published. Here's what I wrote (which includes my edits):

Dear Editor:

Re: The increase in HIV infection among black gay men. 

I recently worked part time as a towel attendant in a Harlem bathhouse. During the two months of my employment I witnessed

After working two months as a part-time towel attendant/porter, I can see in a Harlem bathhouse, I can see why there is an increase in HIV infection among young black gay men. During my employment, I found crack vials, poppers, and other evidence of drug abuse as well as carelessly discarded condoms.

On the flipside of the page was another handwritten (and presumably unpublished) undated draft. This is what I wrote:

While the rest of 125th Street [in Harlem] rebuilds or renovates its premises, the Mount Morris Baths remains dirty and rundown. In a 1999 issue of the New York Blade News [a gay newspaper], Walter Fitzer [the straight owner of the bathhouse] claimed that the Health Department had been "busting my chops for the past three years under [then mayor Rudolph] Giuliani." If that is true, it would seem justified.

AIDS Hysteria In The 1980s

I recently leafed through the June 25, 1988 issue of TV Guide (when it was pocket-size and cost 75 cents). Before tossing it out, I tore out the "Cheers 'N' Jeers" column and put it in a folder marked "LGBTQ." Under "Jeers" was an item about how the openly gay AIDS activist Michael Callen, now deceased, was treated, or more accurately put, mistreated by the staff members at a New York television station where he was scheduled to be interviewed about being a person with AIDS.

According to TV Guide, based on information from the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union), "a technician tossed him a microphone and refused to help him adjust it" and "the make-up artists refused to work on Callen."

I wonder if he pointed out this bad behavior to his interviewer when he went on-camera. If he didn't, he should have. There was a lot of misinformation and fearmongering in the media and elsewhere back then about how AIDS was transmitted.

When I met and spoke with Michael Callen at an AIDS forum held at Hunter College here in New York, I gladly and fearlessly shook his hand. This was back in the early nineties. After that handshake, I've lived to tell the story.

What was their problem?

Note: This blog post originally appeared on my Facebook page on March 27, 2023. I've made a few minor changes.

World AIDS Day, 2018

Today is World AIDS Day, a time to remember friends and family members who succumbed to this disease as well as to reflect on the progress made thus far by medical science in fighting and possibly eradicating it.

Looking back, the AIDS epidemic made the 1980s and 1990s a scary time. Especially because so many people were dropping like flies and a cure seemed a million years away.

But it was also a great time for AIDS activism and artistic expression, particularly among black gay men. So whenever I look through one of my scrapbooks or manuscript folders containing articles that I've written, I'm reminded that, as a journalist, I was privileged to have had the opportunity to witness and document what went on within the gay community during a frightening time.

Gay Activist Cleve Jones's Memoir

I'm looking forward to reading (and reviewing?) When We Rise: My Life in the Movement by Cleve Jones, the San Francisco gay rights activist and founder of the AIDS quilt project. (I'm rarely on Facebook, so the last time I checked, he and I were still Facebook friends.)

 I learned about the book after hearing him being interviewed on public radio's Fresh Air with Terry Gross. I  heard him again today on another public radio show, Here and Now.

Concentration Camps For People With AIDS?

The following brief transcript is from a tape recording I made off the radio of an interview that New York talk show host Barry Gray did with Dr. Stephen Caiazza, on WMCA, in June 1989. Dr. Caiazza (pronounced ky-ay-zah) specialized in caring for people with AIDS and died in 1990 of complications from the disease himself at the age of 46.

Barry Gray: "We are coming close to what someone suggested to me a couple of years ago. I thought he was just kidding. He said we're going to wind up where everybody with AIDS is going to be behind barbed wire in a concentration camp."

Dr. Stephen Caiazza: "Fortunately--unfortunately, I think, the numbers are so astonishingly high that will never happen. The jails in the city of New York are already running at a hundred and four percent of capacity. And that's for convicted felons.

"Where are we going to put these concentration camps? In your backyard?"

Barry Gray: "In Gracie Mansion [the New York mayor's official residence]."

We've come a long way from the days when it was suggested that people with AIDS be tattooed to easily identify them or be put in concentration camps.

Today such sentiments would be considered ridiculous, barbaric, and inhuman.

However, we should keep in mind that in Donald Trump's America anything is possible.

The Goals Of The Minority Task Force On AIDS, 1988

The following is an excerpt from a lengthy interview I did  in 1988 with the late Craig G. Harris, who was the executive director of the Minority Task Force on AIDS. At the time the organization was located on St. Nicholas Avenue at 115th Street in Harlem.The interview took place in his office. The sound quality of the tape was not very good due to outside noise from a barking dog and a jackhammer. Here is what I was able to transcribe:

Craig G. Harris: "We are outgrowing our space and  that's a very good feeling. What that indicates is that we are going to increase staff. We'll soon be adding clerical staff, support staff. Up until this point, support staff has been volunteers. We're in the process of seeking alternative space in Central Harlem. We'll be expanding the Wednesday night dinner program. We'll be doing a lot of staff development that entails professional training for the entire staff including myself. We're going to assist the churches in functioning as communications links and support systems."

Note: MTFA's former space, located in a low-income co-op building, is now a venue for parties and other community events.

AIDS Researcher Wins Eviction Battle

A Greenwich Village co-op board 's year-long court battle to evict a doctor who treats persons with AIDS ended in defeat on October 17 [1984], due to the efforts of a gay rights group and the New York state attorney general's office.

The board, representing the tenants of 49 West 12th Street, told Dr. Joseph A. Sonnabend last year that the tenants wanted him out of the building because of concern for their health and the lowering of property values of their apartments due to AIDS patients entering his office.

Sonnabend, a microbiologist and the occupant of the ground floor office since 1977, consulted his lawyer, William Hibsher of the New York law firm Teitelbaum and Hiller. Hibsher is also a board member of the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, the organization which took the case to court and succeeded in blocking the eviction with a temporary restraining order. The order was issued on October 14, 1983, by the New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan.

Sonnabend had no quarrel with the board's right to evict him. "But the mistake they made," said Sonnabend, "was to say it was over AIDS."

Then it became a case of discrimination, said Hibsher,"against a population that is really more deserving of people's compassion and help. I think that all people know that very often discrimination against people with AIDS is another form of discrimination against gay people."

In New York State, there is no law prohibiting discrimination against people because of sexual orientation; however, Lambda used a provision of the state's human rights law protecting disabled people from discrimination as the basis for their lawsuit.

"Five of Sonnabend's patients," said Hibsher, "joined in the lawsuit for legal reasons. We were concerned that since Dr. Sonnabend is not himself a disabled person, the defendant might take the position that [Sonnabend] could not raise the disability statute in support of his legal position."

With the patients as co-plaintiffs, continued Hibsher, "they could say they are disabled persons, and they are potentially being discriminated against by the building's decision." Two of the five patients have since died of the disease.

In the court settlement, Sonnabend was awarded $10,000 in damages and a new one-year lease. The co-op must also pay $1,000 in legal costs to state Attorney General Robert Abrams's office, which acted as Lambda's co-counsel.

Hibsher sees the settlement as a landmark case that "projects a very strong image on the part of those who protect the rights of these citizens."

He continued: "It's, to our knowledge, the first litigation brought in connection with alleged discrimination against people with AIDS, and it established very importantly legal procedures in the State of New York and nationwide; One, that people with AIDS are considered disabled persons under the disability laws, and most states have a civil rights law which protects persons who are disabled from discrimination. Two, the court issued a preliminary injunction in the course of the litigation and part of its ruling was that it accepted the expert opinion that AIDS is not casually transmitted. Consequently, the court rejected any notion that a person with AIDS could be segregated or kept out of a public accommodation on the grounds of potential contagion. Three, and I think most important, the case stands for the proposition that the civil rights community, Lambda, the attorney general of the State of New York, and other litigants are not going to sit back and let people discriminate" against people who are gravely ill.

Sonnabend, who spends much of his time doing research, said that after the settlement, "some of the tenants offered their congratulations. Many tenants at the time [of the eviction attempt] were quite unhappy with the way the board proceeded."


This article was originally published in the Gay Community News (Boston) on November 10, 1984.

An Etiquette Book For Young Gay Men

One Saturday evening in February of this year, my friend Robert and I stopped by the Suite, a gay bar on Amsterdam Avenue at 109th Street in the Morningside Heights area of Manhattan to relax and chat while sipping sodas.  On a small table near the entrance were several paperback copies (free) of a self-published book called The Essential Sex Venue Etiquette and Resource Guide: For America's Gay and Bisexual Young Men by Robert Brandon Sandor. Browsing through the book (or pamphlet as the author described it), I was particularly fascinated by the glossary which contained many unfamiliar terms such as "bat boy" ("A boy that loves large penises") and "teabagging" ("Placing one's testicles down onto someone's mouth or forehead").

A guidebook such as this one would have been useful to and probably appreciated by previous generations of gay men who had to learn the ropes through trial and error.

I plan to write a much more thorough review of the guidebook for this blog later on.

A Book About Two Unsung AIDS Heroes

A book I am looking forward to reading is historian Martin Duberman's Hold Tight Gently: Michael Callen, Essex Hemphill, and the Battlefield of AIDS, published by The New Press. I had the opportunity of meeting both men in the 1980s.

I learned about this book when I saw the last two copies of the March 2014 issue of A & U magazine on a recent visit to the Gay Community Center on 13th Street in Greenwich Village. Martin Duberman's photo was on the cover, with his name in red letters and a brief description of the book.

AIDS Elegy Book Considered For Publication

Art Mugs the Reaper, an anthology of AIDS elegies, edited by Jeffrey Lilly, a San Francisco-based poet and writer, is currently being considered for publication by the University of Wisconsin Press. I have two elegies that are included in the book: one about poet Essex Hemphill, the other about poet/novelist Melvin Dixon.

Transcribing An Interview With AIDS Activist Craig G. Harris

I have a 90-minute cassette interview that I did with writer/activist Craig G. Harris, when he was the executive director of the Minority Task Force on AIDS in Harlem in 1988. I need to transcribe the interview and post it on this blog.

New York AIDS Forum For Black Men And Women

A forum on AIDS for black gay men and lesbians, sponsored by an ad hoc group of black gay and lesbian activists, was held Feb. 1 [1984] at Hunter College. One of the purposes of the forum was to counteract the widespread belief among black gay men, and the black community in general, that AIDS is a white disease. This perception is fostered by nearly exclusive media attention given to white gay men with AIDS and causes blacks to have a diminished interest in AIDS educational forums and events.

The first of February was chosen because of its significance as the beginning of Black History Month. Gwen Rogers, the forum moderator, said the event would demonstrate that black gay men and lesbians were "concerned about all aspects of our oppression." The forum, she continued, provided "the opportunity for us to raise issues of the struggle against AIDS, to raise the issue of AIDS as a health concern, and to raise the demand that health care is a right."

The audience, numbering between 90 and 100, some of whom were white, heard the following panelists: Leonard Brown, M.D. ("The Medical Facts of AIDS"); Raymond Jacobs, resident recreation therapist at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York ("Psycho-social Issues"); Jessie Cadet ("The Impact of AIDS on the Haitian Community"); and Bruce Hall, a black man with AIDS ("Reflections of a Person with AIDS"). Diego Lopez, a social worker who was called to speak at the last minute, expressed his concern for quality health care and asked the audience to help him and others reach the black gay community with AIDS information.

The ad hoc committee, while planning this forum, said Rogers, a psychologist, did not "view the AIDS question in isolation," but saw it as being part of the overall concern for better health care delivery within the total black community. They also saw the socio-economic ramifications of the disease, which has a 40 percent mortality rate. Rogers saw the forum as something that will help unify the gay, as well as the black, community.

Dr. Brown's presentation of the medical facts on AIDS included the by-now familiar rundown on symptoms and treatments. Jessie Cadet's presentation was short and to the point: "There is an urgent need for more money for AIDS research and the oppression of Haitian immigrants by U.S. officials must end."

The two speakers who gave the most interesting presentations in terms of information, if not style, were Hall and Jacobs.

Hall, a 29-year old ex-New Yorker, now living in Chicago, was diagnosed with AIDS in September 1983. He felt, following the diagnosis, that it was unfair for him to have come down with this disease, especially after several years of abstinence from drugs, alcohol, and sex with multiple partners. He's presently involved in a monogamous relationship, and although he and his lover have not refrained from having sex, they do not exchange body fluids. Hall is also in a self-imposed program of hypnosis, weight-lifting, and bicycling. Although it's part of his battle against AIDS, he's not sure if any of it works.

Jacobs spoke of the isolation and psychological crisis AIDS people endure, leaving them angry, guilty, and ashamed. He's observed a tendency to moralize and to believe that having the disease is due to the wrath of God.

Jacobs placed AIDS people in three categories: those with the disease who have not contracted a major illness; those with a major illness who are working their way towards death and dying; those, like Hall, who have recently been diagnosed.

Hall told this reporter in a later interview that he visits AIDS people in hospitals so they know that someone cares and that there are people with AIDS who are able to function. These visits, he feels, "might give them some hope."

A question-and-answer period followed the prepared presentations.

This is article was originally published in the Gay Community News of Boston (February 18, 1984).

Creating A Shelter For Those With AIDS

"...AIDS is a terrifying disease in several respects. One of the most terrifying elements, however, aside from the fear of disease, infection and death, is the specter of utter loneliness that accompanies AIDS. For one who is in the grips of such threatening disease, to have no home in which to recover, in which to feel safe or in which one can die with dignity magnifies this terror considerably."--Mark S. Senak, AIDS Resource Center (from his testimony before the Committee on Health of the City Council, New York, January 4, 1985).

"If you know someone who is sick with AIDS, do not be afraid to touch them. And being silent is not being kind. Call them up, visit them, hold their hand, touch them, let them know you care. Hope is important to us. Because of this health crisis, gay people are beginning to see that we are more alike than we are different. That we have to help ourselves. Let us be a family for each other."--David Summers, Gay Men's Health Crisis and People With AIDS (from a speech he delivered at the Jerry Falwell protest outside Town Hall in New York, December 10, 1984).

Mark S. Senak, a 29-year-old lawyer, is the vice chairperson of the New York-based AIDS Resource Center, Inc. (ARC), described in its literature as "a non-profit, charitable organization dedicated to serving ambulatory men and women who are in need of resources and/or shelter in an AIDS crisis situation on a case by case basis, without regard to race, creed, or sexual orientation." ARC, in collaboration with the Gay Men's Health Crisis, is attempting to establish New York's first shelter for homeless people with AIDS. (A number of fundraising events have been held in gay-frequented establishments, such as Ty's bar in Greenwich Village, to help ARC and GMHC realize their project, including benefit performances of City Men, a romantic comedy with gay characters, by Philip Blackwell and Laurence Senelick, which drew in over $11,000.) "The first residence will be, among other things," says an ARC flyer, "the direct manifestation of a community's love and care for the afflicted."

Senak, a native of Granite City, Illinois, graduated from Brooklyn Law School. He previously worked as a lawyer in a large investment firm. In August 1984, he started his own law practice on lower Madison Avenue, handling mostly civil cases.



Charles Michael Smith: How did ARC get started?
Mark S. Senak: Actually it was almost two years that a group of people started thinking ahead and thinking about the housing issue and actually sort of planning for the future and seeing that the health crisis would probably produce a lot of homeless people in that it costs so very much to get one's medical care and because of the fear that families are going to have and things like that that they decided to get together and start ARC. One of the principal people to start it is named Buddy Noro. He was the first chairperson of ARC. They began it and began fundraising.
In the last year, we gave away $30,000 to individuals who were having financial difficulties. Some of the people involved initially were ministers. One of them in particular, Mead Bailey, was a principal starter of ARC and a real heartbeat of ARC.

CMS: ARC has three goals. One of them is to establish a shelter for the homeless.
MSS: Right. That's our primary goal. The other is to continue with our direct funding of persons with AIDS. The grants that were being given were grants of $500 and could be used to pay rent or medicine or sometimes even utility costs, if they had not been paid and they were turning off the electricity or some such thing. The third one is the religious advisory committee which is this committee started by Mead Bailey. He began a program of spiritual and pastoral care for persons with AIDS so that if someone's in the hospital with a life-threatening disease, they're often thinking about perhaps dying and what that's going to be like and maybe begin to turn back to some sort of spiritual thinking. Given the nature of relations between gay people and the churches, generally it isn't too good. So Mead started this program whereby if a person wanted to see a minister of their faith or priest, he would be able to put them in touch with somebody who wouldn't be telling them they're damned to hell and that this is God's angry judgment on them. There would be somebody who would be sympathetic and understanding and, in fact, very, very good for the person to talk to as opposed to somebody that they would be afraid of or [who would] begin dredging up any of the reasons for bad relations between gay people and the church.
Mead's program was expanded so that now there's a speaker's bureau that travels to different churches.
Mead died subsequently [from] a heart attack. Of the principal people that started ARC, three are now dead--two with AIDS and Mead with the heart attack.

CMS: You testified recently before the New York City Council's Committee on Health about the need for this shelter. What was the committee members's reactions?
MSS: It was very discouraging. I was discouraged by the whole thing because I sensed a certain hostility from the chairman of the health committee to many of the speakers and in particular to the issue of housing. One question that was asked of me was "What makes your minority so special?" I didn't say it at the time and I'm really upset that I didn't. As soon as I walked out the door, I thought of what I wanted to say: "What makes us special is that we're dying." It astounded me that he would say something like that. I was rather dumbfounded when he asked that.

This is an excerpt from an article that was originally published in the New York Native in 1985.

AIDS: Finding Out What Turns Off The Body's Immune System

"The most important thing that has happened," said Dr. Alvin E. Friedman-Kien of the New York University Medical Center, in a recent newspaper interview, "is that the medical community and the world community have become aware of this illness [AIDS] as a  major threat to the health of all people, people of all backgrounds. The disease is no longer seen as restricted to only homosexual men or intravenous drug users." (Dr. Friedman-Kien was among a team of physicians and researchers at NYU who recognized the beginning of a new health crisis we now call AIDS, Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome.)

The disease, believed to be caused by an unidentified virus, has been called an epidemic because it has struck more than one percent of the population. According to the Centers for Disease Control, as of July 2, 1984, 5,037 AIDS cases have been reported since 1981 nationwide (most of the cases are in New York City). Of that number, 2,274 are now dead. Dr. Friedman-Kien has said that "...[W]e're recognizing cases now that we'd previously missed, or misdiagnosed due to either the patient or the physician who just didn't know what the manifestations of the disease were. The reporting is better.... And there is an increase in cases seen in New York City. My impression is that AIDS is in fact not going away at all but is perpetuating and continuing." (New York Native, July 2-15, 1984) Those who are most at risk for the disease are gay or bisexual men, IV drug abusers, hemophiliacs, and Haitians. (Those in this latter group are thought to be included in the other risk groups.) "My suspicion," said Dr. Friedman-Kien, "and it's only a guess, is that, aside from an agent which causes the ultimate disease, an individual must be predisposed in some way by being immunosuppressed."

One black doctor in Harlem who has shown interest and involvement with AIDS is 36-year-old Donald A. Dayson. He is connected with Harlem Hospital and shares a private office in the Riverton Apartments with Dr. John Holloman. Dr. Dayson, who graduated in 1979 with a medical degree from the State University of New York at Stony Brook, is presently treating a former IV drug abuser for AIDS, a black man in his mid-thirties. Dr. Dayson's patient is among the 26 percent of people with AIDS who are black.

Charles Michael Smith: Do you see AIDS as a major health threat to the black community?
Donald A. Dayson: That's a difficult question to answer because we don't really know the extent of AIDS here. AIDS is something new that we don't quite know how to care for.

CMS: How did you become interested in this disease?
DAD: First of all, I trained at Harlem Hospital which sees a lot of IV drug abusers. More than any other hospital within the city. The first person I ever saw who had immune deficiency was not diagnosed as [having] AIDS. It was a woman who didn't use drugs. She was not related to a gay male. I still don't know what the woman died from but her immunological defenses were totally absent. We didn't do the studies that are now being done with patients who have AIDS such as lymphocyte studies. These [lymphocytes] are different types of white [blood] cells. A lymphocyte is a special form of white cell that is used by the body to fight off infections. A lymphocyte study would be a study of a special type of white blood cell called a lymphocyte. She did not fit the criteria for AIDS.

CMS:You are presently treating an AIDS patient.
DAD: Yes, a former IV drug user.

CMS: At what stage of the disease is he?
DAD: He's in one of the early stages. The diagnosis was just made. I actually suspected the diagnosis in July of 1983. That was when I first encountered the patient. [ Note: His symptoms were weight loss, fatigue, and swollen lymph glands--CMS.] The diagnosis was actually confirmed to the point where we could speak to him directly within the last few  months. We were telling him that he should be careful of who he gets in contact with because there is all kinds of problems out there. AIDS being one of them. I didn't want to tell him that he had AIDS until I was pretty sure that we could rule out any other reason why he was sick. It was during the height of the [AIDS] hysteria [when people thought] that once you got AIDS, you're dead. We didn't want him walking around feeling like a dead person, if he had something else. We were looking at other diseases that could give him this problem, other diseases where there was a hope of some cure. He had asked early on if he had AIDS. We said it could be AIDS, it could be this, it could be that, it could be all these other things.

CMS: How does a doctor treat a person with AIDS?
DAD: You have to understand a little bit about the way we defend ourselves against the ocean of germs that surround us. On everybody's skin there's a germ called staphylococcus which once it gets into your bloodstream, it can kill you very quickly. Once it gets past the skin, we have a good antibiotic for it that can kill it. The skin is one of our major defenses [against germs].

CMS: Do you feel the medical establishment is doing all it can to solve the problem?
DAD: Yes. People in this country tend to think of the medical health system as being well-integrated, that is, all of the different parts of the health system working in unison. It's not.  Sickle cell anemia is a well-known disease because it was a bio-chemical breakthrough that led to the knowledge that we have about sickle cell. We're still a long way from treating that [disease]. And that's from 1948 that we identified the bio-chemical link in sickle cell. We have no cure for [it]. The only thing we can do is treat the disease symptomatically. The only way we can prevent it is to tell someone with the sickle cell trait to be aware that if you marry someone with the trait that you can end up with a child who has sickle cell.

A lot of money has been put into [sickle cell research]. Not because they wanted to see black people treated for their sickle cell but because there was money to be made in it. All of the knowledge that we have, on a scientific basis, we can bring to bear on it. AIDS, scientifically, is a fascinating disease. What is it about the human body that's been turned off with a patient with AIDS?

CMS: There have been stories reported in the media about AIDS patients being mistreated in hospitals by health care workers. Have you found this to be true at Harlem Hospital?
DAD: It varies. The way the media has handled AIDS, I think, has been somewhat irresponsible. Because it has produced a level of fear that makes it difficult to treat some very sick people and also created a fear that might hinder some basic research. I know about the recommendations of the CDC[Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta]. If you're treating someone with AIDS, you have to treat them as if they have hepatitis, an infectious disease. Initially, they [AIDS patients] are placed in isolation. The hepatitis patient is placed in isolation when a question about shedding the virus [arises]. When someone first contracts hepatitis, the virus is still active. When I say isolate them, I don't mean we're really isolating them. What we take is called hepatitis precautions. As long as you wash your hands after seeing them, don't come in contact with their secretions by wearing gloves, and try to avoid people spraying their droplets on you, there's no problem. By shedding [the virus] we mean that the patient is still actively producing the hepatitis virus that can affect someone else.

I don't think it [AIDS] is highly infectious. We don't recommend reverse isolation where everyone coming into contact [with the patient] has to be gowned up. That's because the infections that would wipe out an AIDS patient are ones most people's bodies can control.

The treatment of an AIDS patient [requires the physician] to control the infections, to watch the infections. If you had AIDS, and you have the sniffles, rather than just listening to your nose and describing some symptomatic vindication, I'd make sure I'd get an X-ray and make sure that the sniffles are not a harbinger of something more acute.

CMS: What are your thoughts about the Haitian connection in the AIDS mystery?
DAD: I attended one of the conferences of the New York [City] Department of Health. A member of the panel raised the issue that for Haitians coming to this country, you're asked two questions: "Are you a Communist and are you a homosexual?" If you answer yes to either one, you know that you won't get your visa approved. And something that's not talked about much is that Haiti, while being a very poor country, also seems to have an influx of gay men vacationing there.


This is an excerpt from an unpublished article that I wrote on August 8, 1984.

AIDS Forum For Black Gays Slated For Black History Month (1984)

An ad hoc group of black gay and lesbian activists is sponsoring an AIDS forum to be held February 1 [1984] at Hunter College [in New York City]. The group was formed, said DeWitt Hoard, a social worker and group member, because they "had attended several symposiums and noticed that there was a lack of blacks in the audiences and among the symposium participants." This lack of participation is attributed by many to a widespread belief among black gay men, as well as the black community in general, that AIDS is a white disease, a perception fostered by the exclusive media attention given to white gay men with AIDS. The fact that 26 percent of those with AIDS are black is an indication that "we've been hit just as hard by this epidemic," said Isaac Jackson, another group member, "and it is vitally important that information be disseminated throughout our community."

The group decided  to hold this forum on the first of the month because it is the beginning of Black History Month, a date which becomes "quite significant," said Gwen Rogers, the forum's moderator, "when you consider that we, as black lesbians and gay people, certainly are concerned about all aspects of our oppression. This will be the opportunity for us to raise the issue of the struggle against AIDS, to raise the issue of AIDS as a health concern, to raise the demand that health care is a right, and to highlight the fact that as lesbians and gay people, we've certainly been a part of the struggle and this is a way to be very visible and active."

The ad hoc committee see the AIDS issue as being part of the overall concern for better health care delivery with the total black community. They also see the socio-economic ramifications of the AIDS epidemic. "We have seen a number of attempts," said Rogers, a psychologist, "either by people who are talking about funding for AIDS research or by other anti-gay people to say 'Why should there be funding for AIDS research when there isn't funding for sickle cell?'"

"Gay issues for blacks," said Hoard,"take a third stand and maybe even lower on the totem pole." There are people, he further said, who see this attitude as an indication of black homophobia, however Hoard sees it as more of "a prioritizing situation wherein the black community is many times focusing on employment and housing. I think," he continued, "it's important that somehow we begin to put all of the problems that we have within the black community together under an umbrella situation. Somewhat like under oppression because oppression certainly gets involved in unemployment, in housing, and it also gets involved in a situation like AIDS."

The forum, which is being co-sponsored by the Lesbian and Gay Community Center of Hunter College, will deal with the following topics: "The medical Facts on AIDS," "AIDS and the Crisis in Black Health Care," "Social Services for People with AIDS," "The Impact of AIDS on the Haitian Community" ("There's been a great deal of racism," said Rogers, "that's been whipped up in terms of our Haitian sisters and brothers, primarily by the government and the press."), and "Personal Reflections of a Person with AIDS." There will be four panelists at the forum. A question-and-answer period will follow the presentations.

The forum is free of charge and open to the general public. It starts at 7 p.m. and ends at 10 p.m. in Room 615 of the West Auditorium at Hunter College, located at Lexington Avenue and 68th Street, in Manhattan. The school is accessible to the IRT Lexington Avenue line.

Note: I wrote this article on January 15, 1984. It was subsequently published in the New York Native.

An AIDS Forum At Hunter College (1984)

An AIDS forum for black gays, sponsored by an ad hoc group of black gay and lesbian activists, was held on February 1 [1984] at Hunter College [in New York City]. One of the purposes of the forum was to counteract the widespread belief among black gay men, as well as the black community in general, that AIDS is a white disease, a perception fostered by the exclusive media attention given to white gay men with AIDS thereby causing blacks to take less of an interest in AIDS forums.

The first of the month was chosen because of its significance as the beginning of Black History Month. It would show, said Gwen Rogers, the forum's moderator, that black gays and lesbians were "concerned about all aspects of our oppression." The forum, she continued, provided "the opportunity for us to raise the issue of the struggle against AIDS, to raise the issue of AIDS as a health concern, and to raise the demand that health care is a right."

The audience, numbering between 90 and 100, some of whom were white, heard the following panelists: Leonard Brown, MD ("The Medical Facts on AIDS"); Raymond Jacobs, resident recreation therapist at Beth Israel Medical Center, New York ("Psychosocial Issues"); Jessie Cadet ("The Impact of AIDS on the Haitian Community"); and Bruce Hall, a black person with AIDS ("Personal Reflections of a Person with AIDS"). Also Diego Lopez, a social worker, who was called to speak at the last minute, expressed his concern for quality health care and asked the audience to help him and others to reach the black community with AIDS information.

The ad hoc committee while planning this forum, said Rogers, a psychologist, did "not view the AIDS crisis in isolation" but saw it as being part of the overall concern for better health care delivery within the total black community. They also saw the socio-economic ramifications of the disease, which, according to Dr. Brown, has a 40 percent mortality rate. Rogers saw the forum as something that will help unify the gay as well as the black community.

Much of the medical information given has been around awhile. Jessie Cadet's presentation was short and to the point: there is an urgent need for more money for AIDS research and the oppression of Haitian immigrants by U.S. officials must end.

The two speakers who gave the most interesting presentations, in terms of information, if not style, were Hall and Jacobs.

Hall, a 29-year-old ex-New Yorker, now living in Chicago, was diagnosed as having AIDS in September of 1983. He felt, following the diagnosis, that it was unfair for him to have come down with this disease, especially after several years of abstinence from drugs, alcohol, and sex with multiple partners. He is presently involved in a monogamous relationship and, although he and his lover have not refrained from having sex, they do not exchange body fluids. Hall is also in a self-imposed program of hypnosis, weight lifting (two 40-pound dumbbells), and bicycling (18-30 miles a day). It's part of his battle against AIDS, although he's not sure if any of it works.

Jacobs spoke of the isolation and psychological crisis AIDS people endure, leaving them feeling angry, guilty, and ashamed. There is the tendency to moralize and believe the disease resulted from the wrath of God.

Jacobs placed AIDS people in three categories: those with the disease who have not contracted  major illness, those with a major illness who are working their way towards death or dying, and those, like Hall, who have recently been diagnosed.

Hall told this reporter in a later interview that he visits AIDS people in the hospitals so that they know that someone out there cares and that there are people with AIDS who are functioning. He felt that these visits "might give them some hope."

A question-and-answer period followed the presentations.

Note: I wrote this unpublished (?) article on February 9, 1984. An earlier version was written in January of that year, probably for the New York Native.

Bruce Hall Fights To Regain His Airline Job

Before Bruce Hall was put on what he calls "forced medical leave of absence," he had been a flight attendant for a major U.S. airline. Management made the decision to relieve him of his duties when they learned of his AIDS diagnosis not because they believed AIDS is spread by casual contact--they don't--but because, says Hall, in a telephone interview, "They're worried about the public perception should the public find out that this airline is flying people who have AIDS." The fact that the airline informed its 8,200 flight attendants "that there's no reason for them to fear someone with AIDS on board the airplane," he continues, means that "they have destroyed their own case."

Hall wants his job back. And he is putting up a courageous three-prong fight: against AIDS itself, the perception that the disease makes those it strikes vulnerable to all viruses and bacteria instead of specific ones, and job discrimination toward people with AIDS.

His battle with the airline is quite involved. Simply stated, it consists of complaints filed with the following organizations: the union (his case is tied to a similar one in Los Angeles with the same airline), the state human rights commissions in New York and Illinois (New York, he learned later, rejected the complaint after he told them about the Illinois complaint; a complaint, explains Hall, filed in one state is binding in all other states. He filed in both states because "I'm between both addresses."), and the U.S. Department of Labor, Division of Federal Contract Compliance "because the airline flies the U.S. mail. I gave them the background story the other day." And, according to Hall, the department agreed that discrimination did exist in this case.

If these complaints are "resolved unfavorably," Hall intends to go to the state courts, and if necessary, to the federal level.

Regarding his condition, he vigorously and enthusiastically reports that he is "feeling healthy as a pig."

This article was originally published in the Boston-based Gay Community News on December 8, 1984.

Learning To Live With AIDS

September 1983. The date may not have much significance to many people but to Bruce Hall, a 29-year-old black gay man, it had profoundly changed his life, perhaps forever. That was when he went to his doctor with a temperature of 103 and throat thrush and was diagnosed as being among the 3,210 people with AIDS, a disease, says Leonard Brown, MD, of New York's Community Health Project, with a 40 percent mortality rate.

To Hall, a native of New York City, now living in Chicago, the diagnosis was unfair. Especially after years of abstinence from drugs, alcohol, and multiple sex partners. He had even quit smoking cigarettes. (Although during the interview in a Greenwich Village restaurant, Hall bought a pack of cigarettes and chain-smoked four of them. he attributed his smoking to nervousness caused by the interview. He later left the pack of unsmoked cigarettes on the table.) But none of that seemed to matter. He had to learn to live with a disease that not only debilitated its victim but also intensified homophobia and mass hysteria. These last two cost Hall his job.

He had known about AIDS for a long time. He just didn't think that he would get it. His black gay friends deluded themselves by thinking of AIDS as a white man's disease. They don't anymore.

However, Bruce Hall is a fighter. He says he doesn't want to live his life in a bubble, being afraid of everybody and everything. To counteract that feeling, he has put himself through a self-imposed physical fitness program involving bicycling 18 to 30 miles a day, lifting two 40-pound dumbbells up to one and a quarter hours a day, and much walking. He is also undergoing hypnosis, although he is not sure of its effectiveness against AIDS. In the past few months, Hall has seen a vast improvement in his weight and he has not caught any colds, he says, since the diagnosis.

Hall graduated from Wesleyan University in Connecticut in 1977 with a B.A. in sociology. He is presently attending Loop College in Chicago where he is studying for a certificate that will enable him to counsel alcohol abusers.

Recently Hall delivered a presentation, with three other panelists, among them Dr. Brown, at an AIDS forum for the black gay community in the West Auditorium of Hunter College [in New York].

This excerpt is from an article about the late Bruce Hall. It was originally published in the New York Native in 1984.

Blacks With AIDS

Black gay men with AIDS are invisible as far as most of the black press is concerned. Fortunately, Essence magazine doesn't see it that way. In the August 1985 issue, there is a beautifully written, although disturbing, article by Marie Blackwell which details the psychological and physical deterioration of her 36-year-old brother Chet, who eventually died a little over a year after being hospitalized when it was suspected that he had the dreaded disease.

Any African-American who believes, after all this time, that AIDS is a white man's disease, should be required to read this piece, entitled "AIDS in the Family." Blackwell writes that shortly before Chet's death, his body, which had once been "tall, lean, and muscular," had gone down to 98 pounds and "contorted itself into a fetal position--he couldn't straighten his limbs. His eyes were bulging with fear, and he kept the covers over his head the entire time" she visited him in the hospital.

Blackwell confesses that she was "almost totally ignorant about the extent of AIDS contagiousness." If her family had been readers of the Native, a lot of their fear and ignorance after Chet's release from the hospital would have been dispelled. But Chet was fortunate to have a family that loved him enough to be there when he needed them, whether at home or in the hospital.

The family, admits Blackwell, "were angry at him" for being gay because his "choice" of lifestyle had such a profound "impact on all of us." But, "whatever Chet's sexual preference, he was still our big, silly, lovable brother" who, among other things, "cheered us up when we were on punishment."

Jill Nelson's sidebar, "The Facts About AIDS," excellently capsulizes statistical and medical data in nontechnical language. She makes one interesting parenthetical  comment: The discovery of AIDS in Africa "coincided with its discovery in the United States." In other words, there's some doubt in her mind about the African connection.

I wish that Native writer Craig Harris's short story, "Cut Off From Among Their People," which appears in the black gay literary magazine Blackheart 3: The Telling of Us, had been reprinted in the same issue of Essence. It would have given a gay perspective on the disease.

Harris's superb story is about Jeff, a grief-stricken black gay man who attends his lover's funeral and is given the cold shoulder by the family of the deceased. Although Jeff was faithful to his lover, "spending endless hours by his side, covering hospital bills, always keeping [the family] abreast of his condition" while the lover was hospitalized, the family disregarded these acts of love by not asking Jeff for his assistance in making funeral arrangements.


This article was originally published in the New York Native (August 11-25, 1985). It was an item in a "Media Watch" column I wrote for the paper.

The AIDS Gravy Train

The Voice of the People
New York Daily News
450 West 33rd Street
New York, NY 10001
February 20, 1997

Dear Editor:

If a cure for AIDS is ever found, the result will be a lot of unemployed people. Since the onslaught of the disease in 1981, a cottage industry has mushroomed: organizations, periodicals, housing facilities, clinics, etc. And most, if not all, are recipients of public funds.

In every major American city there are probably more groups dealing with AIDS-related issues than there are for any other disease. These days everybody and his brother is hopping a ride on the AIDS gravy train.

Sincerely yours,
Charles Michael Smith

This letter was published on March 15, 1997.