AIDS activist hopeful in dark times

Founder of the Black AIDS Institute reflects as decades of progress come under attack.

- TYRONE BEASON

DR. NEIL LOWE, Gazelle Howard, Dr. Marjorie Hill, Phill Wilson and Dr. Jesse Milan Jr. at a gala in 2008.

The year was 1987. Phill Wilson was 31, a recent transplant to L.A. from his hometown of Chicago. A mysterious infection that weakened its hosts' immune systems was killing people at a terrifying rate, while the Reagan administration downplayed and openly joked about the disease. Some major news outlets initially wrote off the emerging epidemic as a "gay plague," insinuating that other Americans didn't need to worry about it.

Wilson's doctor told him that he was HIV-positive, had six months to live and that he should get his affairs in order.

Instead, Wilson decided to "focus on the living."

"Let's use the time I have to do something," he recalls thinking.

"My life," Wilson says now, at age 69, "is that something."

Wilson went on to found L.A.'S Black AIDS Institute, using the nonprofit think tank to draw attention to the lack of outreach, prevention and treatment programs tailored to Black Americans-despite the disproportionate toll that AIDS had taken on them.

Wilson not only defied his doctor's orders. He also defied the odds, surviving one of the world's deadliest epidemics, along the way preaching the message of prevention and care, from demonstrations in the nation's capital to the sanctified realm of the Black church.

It's been 40 years since Angelenos took to the streets for the first time to raise money for research in the wake of screen legend Rock Hudson's stunning announcement that he had AIDS in 1985. That's why it's so hard for Wilson to accept that today, as L.A. is set to hold its annual AIDS Walk on Sunday in West Hollywood, a new era of death and grief could be on the horizon.

Just as success appears within reach to end fatalities from HIV/AIDS worldwide, the U.S. the global leader in that battle- seems to be in retreat.