North Carolina and the Problem of AIDS: Advocacy, Politics, and Race in the South

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I have many people to thank for making this book possible. I owe intellectual and professional debts to several people. Margaret Humphreys, my key adviser during my time at Duke, patiently directed an often unconventional student as I navigated my graduate experience at Duke, and her support has continued to open doors of opportunity to me that would not be opened otherwise. She read some of the earliest iterations of the manuscript , and I appreciated her humor, candor, and ever-present generosity throughout this process. Along with Margaret, Peter English provided hours of support during my time at Duke, and I left there with not only the skills he taught but also the indelible marks of graciousness and friendship that he left on my life. Finally, the work and friendship of James Thomas, at the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill, has proved profoundly influential on the way I view disease, society, and the endeavor for social justice in this world. Jim has also modeled what it means to be an intellectually engaged person of faith, for which I am truly thankful. I started this project when I was at Duke, refined it at UNC, and completed it at my present home at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. I have many people at each institution to thank for their help along the way. At Duke, John Thompson and Robin Ennis enabled me to finish my graduate studies ahead of schedule. Other academic mentors, including Jeffrey Baker, Susan Thorne, Claudia Koonz, and William Chafe, were generous with their time and insights. UNC’s Center for the Study of the American South supported me as a postdoctoral fellow in Southern Studies during 2007 and 2008. I thank Dr. Harry Watson and the staff there for providing me with a wonderful fellowship that allowed me the time and support I needed to conduct the major oral history portion of this project and to begin writing this book. My department chair at UT, Dr. Milton Packer, has been enormously supportive, and my division chief, Dr. John Sadler, has provided tremendous support, guidance, and encouragement in my recent endeavors. I am grateful for the support of all my divisional colleagues and staff, and I am particularly indebted to Dr. Simon Craddock Lee for numerous keen insights as I worked to shape the last parts of this book. xiiACKNOWLEDGMENTS The origins of this book stem from my time working with Duke’s Promising Practices Youth Program. That program would not have existed save for the strong advocacy of Duke University Health System’s then-chancellor, Dr. Ralph Snyderman; vice chancellor, Dr. Jean Spaulding; and associate vice president, MaryAnn Black. I owe each of them a debt of gratitude for providing me with flexible leave to pursue my doctorate degree and to share the findings in my study with my students. I am also deeply grateful to the students and families who allowed me into their lives during my time running the Promising Practices Youth Program. I have written this book to answer those hard questions they kept asking. I hope this book helps them find some answers. And, by the way, a black man can become president. Most of the archival research for this project was done at the Duke University Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library, and the staff there provided me hours of exceptional assistance as I did work in the archives of various AIDS Service Organizations. I would particularly like to thank Jodi Berkowitz, Melissa Delbridge, Elizabeth Dunn, Megan Lewis, Linda McCurdy, Laura Micham, Nixie Miller, Eleanor Mills, Janie Morris, Ali Poffinberger, and Kelly Wooten. I owe to Ian Lekus, who now teaches history at Harvard, an extra note of gratitude, as he originally catalogued and organized many of the files that provided me with research material. He was also very generous in providing the transcripts of many of his oral histories of Lesbian and Gay Health Project members. The oral history project at UNC’s Center for the Study of the American South was also of great help, and I appreciate the work that Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, David Cline, and others have done with that program over the years. I also want to thank the staff of the North Carolina Department of Statistics for providing me information on incarceration rates, county AIDS reports, and the like. The oral history respondents themselves were profoundly generous with their time, particularly David Jolly, Dante Noto, Anthony Adinolfi, Louise...