Summit Overview

AIDS has surpassed heart disease, cancer, homicide, and drugs and alcohol as the leading cause of death among African Americans. (Courtesy of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)

Summit Overview

In October 1996, more than one hundred African American leaders gathered at Harvard University to respond to the AIDS crisis in their community. The Leading for Life summit convened leaders from academia, business, entertainment, law, the media, medicine, politics, and religion to raise awareness nationally and to develop a national campaign for urgent action.

The summit had two aims: to provide participants with the information and tools they need to promote communication among other leaders in their communities; and to seek a commitment from participants and their organizations to support new and expanded programs specifically designed to combat AIDS in the African American community.

During the summit, participants reviewed current epidemiologic information, discussed the barriers to effective community action, and developed a plan to improve prevention within African American communities and to catalyze local and national organizations to respond to AIDS.

"We envision the Leading for Life campaign as a unified effort by African Americans to fight the HIV epidemic and halt our community's devastation from AIDS," said Mario Cooper of the Harvard AIDS Institute's International Advisory Council. "It's a campaign to affirm the most fundamental human right -- the right to life."

"This is an historic gathering and a call to arms against a disease that is ravaging our community," said Henry Louis Gates, Jr., director of Harvard's W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for Afro-American Research, in opening the summit. He compared the AIDS epidemic to the Vietnam War. "AIDS is our generation's war," he said. "Each of us knows victims of this dread disease. More than a dozen of my intimate friends have died of AIDS, and as many more are HIV positive. And like the war, a disproportionate number of people infected with HIV -- and those who have succumbed to AIDS -- are African American."

David Satcher, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and Helene Gayle, director of the National Center for HIV, STD, and TB Prevention at the CDC, provided the latest AIDS statistics. Harvard School of Public Health graduate student Aaron Foster presented projections of infection and death rates for the next ten years.

Belynda Dunn, an AIDS prevention educator, and Phill Wilson, an AIDS policy expert, spoke of their own experiences as African Americans living with HIV. "This is an emergency meeting," Dunn said. "Yet, where have all of you been? AIDS was an emergency when I found out that I was infected and there were no services for me. There was no support in the black community for a straight black woman with HIV. I had to go to the gay community for support. If it were not for the gay community, I would not be here today."

In addressing the silence that has surrounded the epidemic in African American communities, Wilson asked, "How many of us will be infected before it becomes our problem? How many will develop AIDS? How many will die? Three hundred thousand cases later, I still wonder what has to happen for it to be our problem."

Norm Nickens, chair of the board of the National Minority AIDS Council, expressed his frustration that as the epidemic escalates within the African American community, recent changes in Medicaid, welfare reform, and federal, state, and local budget cutbacks are sabotaging newly formed and struggling minority AIDS service organizations.

Dunn, Wilson, and Nickens all described the futile attempts of local AIDS activists to involve African American community leaders -- including elected officials, church heads, and health care providers -- in the fight against HIV. Mario Cooper also spoke about African American leaders avoiding the AIDS issue: "This meeting is intended to send a clear signal that our leaders must stand firm in efforts to educate people and fight the disease."

Summit participants expressed gratitude for the many grassroots activists dedicated to spreading information, advocating for funding, and counseling young African Americans. Wilson noted that these activists have been fighting the war on behalf of far too many African Americans with HIV who have not had the support of their communities or leaders.

By the close of the meeting, summit participants had adopted a national Call for Action (see page 13), which Gates said was "a call to battle not only the disease itself, but also the societal trappings that have obscured the epidemic behind homophobia, ignorance, and denial."

Despite the frustration expressed, the diversity of leadership and the commitment shown at the summit led Randall Morgan, president of the National Medical Association, to say, "This meeting was powerful not because it was a medical meeting of physicians to impart the latest clinical information. It was a meeting of African Americans doing something about a disease that's ravaging our community."

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