Massachusetts: AIDS War Finally Wins Backing of Black Clergy

Ten clergy members have agreed to put their names -- and those of their churches and mosques -- on a dozen AIDS prevention billboards to be posted next month in Dorchester, Mattapan, and Roxbury, Mass. The signs will bear the face of Belynda Dunn, the deceased activist who spent more than a decade urging members of the clergy to join the war on AIDS. "It's a new day for the black church, and the new day is one where we're being called and responding," said the Rev. Martin McLee, pastor of Union United Methodist Church in Boston's South End, whose name will be one of those on the billboards.

In Massachusetts, state disease specialists report that African-Americans account for one of every four people living with the virus -- even though they represent just one of every 20 people in the general population. Their rate of infection is 10 times higher than the rate for white non-Hispanics.

The billboard campaign is the brainchild of Robin Fuller, who runs the Who Touched Me Ministry for the AIDS Action Committee of Massachusetts. That ministry is the faith-based initiative presided over by Dunn until her death in March following a liver transplant. AIDS Action decided to pursue a grant from pharmaceutical maker GlaxoSmithKline, which offers money for campaigns that encourage people to get tested and treated. Fuller developed the strategy of placing billboards in the neighborhoods most devastated by the epidemic. And she decided to ask clergy members if they would be willing to have their names prominently displayed. The agency won the grant, which covers $20,000 of the $24,000 cost of the billboards, with the balance paid by AIDS Action. The billboards will remain in place for at least a month and even longer if no one else is pressing to rent them.

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