The Quilt, maintained by the NAMES Project Foundation (NPF) is currently under the stewardship of the National Aids Memorial, and is being preserved in the vast archives of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. The Quilt started 33 years ago in San Francisco at the height of the AIDS epidemic when a group of people gathered to remember the names of their loved ones they feared would be forgotten by history. They created the first panels of the quilt and it has grown to encompass over about 50,000 3ft. by 6ft panels. You can learn more about this memorial, search the Quilt for one of the nearly 100,000 tributes, and learn more about other AIDS memorials at the National Aids Memorial website.
Surviving Voices Oral History project focuses on a specific group heavily impacted by HIV/AIDS each year. In 2019, the highlighted group was transgender men and women, gender non-conforming individuals, and non-binary individuals with HIV/AIDS. Explore previous years communities of note: including Asian and Pacific Islanders (2018), Women (2017), the National Hemophilia Community, and the San Francisco Leather Community.
When HIV/AIDS began into proliferation through the thriving gay communities of American in the early 1982, scientists called the disorder, gay-related immune deficiency (GRID).
This May 1982 article by the New York Times, "New Homosexual Disorder Worries Health Officials: Homosexual Disorder Worries Health Officials" was the first to mention GRID.
Find more historical and current articles from around the world through UB's databases including:
How to survive a plague (DVD) by 
How to Survive a Plague (Print Book) by
Many gay Black writers and screen writers expressed their visceral fears, concerns, and need to ACT UP during the height of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s and 1990s. Gay Black men found community in the works of Joe Beam and Essex Hemphill, collectors and editors of Black gay writing for publication, and in the films of Marlon Roggs, and Isaac Julien. Some refer to these writings as the "Black gay renaissance" (African American Intellectual History Society).
Tongues Untied (1989), a documentary film exploring Black gay men's lives ends with the following poem by Marlon Riggs:
Don't Call Us Dead by AIDSource is "one source for HIV/AIDS information.
Information on Specific Populations: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender, topics include:
Lesbian and HIV/AIDS Literature Search
Find these articles and much more, here.
Black-White Disparities in HIV?AIDS: The Role of Drug Policy and the Corrections System, Journal of Health Care for the Poor Underserved.
Black Communities 'belief in "AIDS as genocide": A barrier to overcome for HIV prevention by Mary E. Guinan MD was presented at the 10th Annual Scientific Meeting of the American College of Epidemiology, Atlanta, GA, in November 1991. The article discusses the black community's distrust of the medical field, in part because of an inhumane legacy of medical experimentation on black people throughout the history of the United States.
New Factsheets: HIV's Impact in the African American Community, published by HIV.gov, (February 2019), reports that African Americans continue to be disproportionately impacted by HIV, a lack of access to adequate health care,and health literacy, Tragically, African American men who have sex with men account for most new cases of HIV. African American gay and bisexual men are at a higher risk because of historical problems in the Black community like delay in linkage to HIV medical care, lower viral suppression, thus increasing the communicability of the disease. Socioeconomic factors like lower income and education may impact rates of infection. One of the most profound influences is stigma, homophobia, and discrimination that African American gay and bisxual men face when they seek health care services (CDC, 2018).