In episode three of Black HIV in the South: How Did We Get Here? Anna DeShawn and Duane Cramer explore the impact of the faith-based community’s response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

DeShawn revisits a conversation she had with Nathan Townsend, HIV Prevention Programs Manager for the National AIDS Education & Services for Minorities (NAESM). Founded in 1990, NAESM is one of the first African American community-based non-profit organizations fighting HIV/AIDS in Atlanta, Georgia. “I think a lot of how we got here and how [HIV/AIDS] is so expansive, especially in the South, is because of the conditioning, the social norms, the cultural traditions here. We’ve always called the South the Bible Belt. And that’s not because they are more religious… they’re more sanctimonious, and they have concentrated efforts of… creating environments where people are ostracized because of their behaviors,” says Townsend.

Because the church is the cornerstone of many Southern communities, its impact was greater on people living with HIV/AIDS in the South. By creating a culture of fear and condemnation around HIV/AIDS, the church forced some of their own congregants to live in secrecy and shame, or leave the community altogether. Cramer describes the experience of his relatives in the South; “once their HIV status was known, or their sexual orientation… they were often ostracized and kicked out of those churches. And they felt alone, isolated and suicidal. So that’s the story of many, many people; people that have left the South and their small communities. And they moved to San Francisco, they moved to New York, they get out of the South because of how they were ostracized in the church in their communities, and they can find affirming congregations in other places.”

DeShawn shares a conversation she had with Jimmy Gibbs, a fourth-generation ordained minister and chair of the National Centers for AIDS Research CAB Coalition. Gibbs describes the poor treatment that HIV/AIDS patients would receive from doctors and nurses during the early days of the epidemic. He decided to do something about it. “A group of us got together and said, we’re going to get nursing degrees. We’re going to fix this… So we mounted a coalition of about 6-7 people that go to nursing school at night, do their undergrad during the day… Most of us finished between 87 and 88 and went right into the hospitals, right into nursing homes where they were discharged. We don’t talk about it as much as we used to, but we know that we made a difference,” says Gibbs.

DeShawn and Cramer note that though the church communities shunned people living with HIV/AIDS, there were unsung heroes among them who chose to respond to the virus with love. “Those are the unsung heroes, the family members that just stepped up because these were their loved ones… You don’t hear a lot about those stories. About the children, the grandparents, and all of them. But the support has been there for a lot of folks, just not talked about,” says Cramer.

Listen to the Black HIV in the South: How Did We Get Here? podcast by clicking here.

SEE ALSO:

New Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Podcast Series Spotlights Epidemic In The South

Episode 2 Of ‘Black HIV In The South’ Podcast Addresses Early Years Of Epidemic

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