June 5th – Part One: Minnesota’s HIV/AIDS Crisis (1981-1986) by Britt Aamodt
In July 1981, the New York Times published an article about a mysterious illness plaguing gay men in New York City. After reading the article, Bruce Brockway, a gay activist and publisher of the Twin Cities’ first gay newspaper, turned to his partner and said, “I think I have that.” That was AIDS and Bruce was right. Numbers-wise, Minnesota was never a hot zone of infection. But for the Minnesotans living with HIV/AIDS, the struggles were the same: to stay alive and to fight the homophobia that wanted to ignore an epidemic dismissed as a gay man’s disease.