Mourning in America
18 January - 35 minsValerie Reyes-Jimenez called it “The Monster.” That’s how some people described HIV and AIDS in the 1980s. Valerie thinks as many as 75 people from her block on New York City’s Lower East Side died. They were succumbing to an illness that was not recognized as the same virus that was killing young, white, gay men just across town in the West Village.
At the same time, in Washington, D.C., Gil Gerald, a Black LGBTQ+ activist, saw his own friends and colleagues begin to disappear, dying out of sight and largely ignored by the wider world.
In our first episode of Blindspot: The Plague in the Shadows, we learn how HIV and AIDS was misunderstood from the start — and how this would shape the rea...
Series Episodes
What If I Could Have Grown Old With My Brother?
How one woman refused to accept the status quo and helped save the lives of thousands of people in her neighborhood.
39 mins
15 February Finished
Respectability Politics and the AIDS Crisis
Why it took the Black community so long to respond to the AIDS crisis.
47 mins
8 February Finished
'Women Don’t Get AIDS, They Just Die From It'
The story of how a group of women changed the very definition of AIDS.
44 mins
1 February Finished
If I Didn't Have HIV, I Wouldn't Have Met You
Stories from Harlem Hospital’s pediatric AIDS ward.
39 mins
25 January Finished
