AIDS Fades from White to Black

Today, however, AIDS is increasingly considered largely a ''Black disease'' that afflicts both gays and straights, males and females.

''Today, more than half of all people living with HIV/AIDS and newly-infected with HIV each year in the United States are Black,'' Phill Wilson, executive director of the Black AIDS Institute, said at a news conference here Monday.

''Among women, Blacks account for two-thirds of all new infections. And recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention studies estimate nearly half of all Black gay and bisexual men in some of America's urban centers are already infected. These facts represent an unprecedented crisis for Black America.''

Wilson and Pernessa Seele, founder of the Balm in Gilead and a major organizer of Black church efforts in the U.S. and Africa, have had a major impact on helping African-Americans realize that HIV and AIDS are ravaging Blacks in the U.S. and around the world, especially in Africa.

The heightened awareness was evident at the news conference called by Wilson.

Among those present to lend support were actor Danny Glover, U.S. Representatives Charles Rangel and Donna M. Christenson, NAACP President Bruce Gordon, Reverends Gregory Smith of Mother AME Zion Church and Edwin Sanders of Metropolitan Interdenominational Church; National Urban League Senior Vice President for Programs Donald Bowen; Rachel Guglielmo of the Open Society Institute, and news media representatives from the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA), American Urban Radio Networks and Black Entertainment Television.

All have signed on to Phill Wilson's call to ''win'' the AIDS fight over the next five years.

His organization issued a new report titled, ''AIDS in Black Face: 25 Years of an Epidemic.''

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