In the decades since it was identified in 1981, HIV/AIDS has devastated African American communities. Members of those communities mobilized to fight the epidemic and its consequences from the beginning of the AIDS activist movement.
Dan Royles' (Assistant Professor of History, Florida International University) book "To Make the Wounded Whole" offers the first history of African American AIDS activism introducing a diverse constellation of activists, including medical professionals, Black gay intellectuals, church pastors, Nation of Islam leaders, recovering drug users, and Black feminists who pursued a wide array of grassroots approaches to slow the epidemic's spread and address its impacts.
This event is part of the Lehman Center for American History's New Book Series: Historians in the Archives. It is co-sponsored by the RBML.
