March Tries to Make Blacks Aware of AIDS

Despite the blazing noontime sun, the mothers, grandmothers, daughters and sisters striding through the Crenshaw district Saturday all wore black.

With voices more than 300 strong, the women cried out: “Spread the word! Stop HIV!” to draw public attention to the impact of HIV and AIDS on the African American community. The march, organized by the Alliance of Black Women Organizations, was also intended to educate people of color--particularly black women--about the deadly disease.

“For too long, too many people have been in denial . . . thinking HIV is a white gay disease,” said Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles), who led the two-mile march and chairs the alliance, a coalition of more than 80 African American women’s groups.

Although blacks compose 12% of the U.S. population, they represent 43% of all new AIDS cases, according to a 1998 study by the Harvard AIDS Institute and the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Among women, African Americans represent 60% of all new cases.

Though deaths from AIDS have been declining in the United States since 1996, the decrease is smaller for women than men, and smallest overall for African Americans and those infected through heterosexual contact, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

“Black women are dying at an alarming rate from AIDS,” said Bobbie Jean Anderson, a leader in the Black Women’s Forum.

The rally, she said, should be a “wake-up call for black women and other minorities to get tested and treated.”

Starting from a parking lot on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard near Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza, the women walked briskly through a commercial district, distributing literature on HIV and AIDS.

Some handed out pamphlets titled: “Getting Him to Use a Condom,” which tell women, “You can’t tell if he has HIV by looking at him” and advise them to “talk business before pleasure.”

Darue Poche, a tattoo artist resting outside a tattoo parlor, got a black card that asked: “Is your partner HIV-positive?”

So did the Rev. James Garrison as he waited for his Volvo at a carwash.

“It’s good to have this kind of public showing,” said Garrison, who is visiting from Kansas City, Mo.

Surveying the procession stretching almost a block before him, he added: “A lot of folks in the black community don’t realize how HIV has ravaged our folks.”

Even the medical community has been ill-informed, participants said.

At a rally after the march, Shirley Lee of Los Angeles said several doctors failed to diagnose her HIV even though she suffered from the classic symptoms of the disease for several months. They apparently did not think she was at risk because she was 50 and had been monogamous. Only when she saw an African American doctor last year did he test her for HIV, she said.

Cynthia C. Davis, president of the board of directors of T.H.E. Clinic and assistant professor in family medicine at Charles Drew University, said that in her 16 years of working in community health, she has never before seen such activism among black women.

“HIV has been around 20 years now. This is the first time in my experience we have taken to the streets,” she said. “This is long overdue, community action like this.”