Items

• Excerpt from Oral history interview with Daniel William 1996
  An excerpt from an oral history interview of Daniel William performed and recorded in 1996 by Gerald Oppenheimer at the Columbia Center for Oral History. William discusses his experiences providing healthcare to gay men in New York City, the discrimination that gay men faced when seeking healthcare within New York City's medical infrastructure, the factors that lead patients to obscure their sexual history from healthcare providers, and the negative effects on health outcomes.
• “You Have To Leave.” Facing Discrimination In A Hospital At The Height of the AIDS Crisis.
  Video interview with Doug Rice produced for I'm From Driftwood, an online LGBTQ story archive. In the interview, Rice describes being ejected from the hospital room where he was caring for his partner who was suffering from dementia and could not provide an accurate medical history. Rice's experience illustrate the ways in which discrimination against the LGBTQ community directly prevented doctors from providing patients with the highest quality care. Queer partnerships were not legally recognized, so patients and their loved ones were often forced to endure illness and treatment alone.
• "FREE HEALTH CARE"
  A poster created by the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (or ACT UP, an organization at the center of the AIDS activist movements of the 1980s and 90s) in advance of a demonstration outside New York City's Beekman Hospital on September 11, 1991. The poster denounces mandatory HIV testing for healthcare workers on the grounds that it perpetuates AIDS phobia and disqualifies community based doctors and healthcare workers who are HIV positive. The poster depicts a healthcare worker in shackles to represent the unnecessary constraint that HIV testing mandates imposes on them, and provides details on the demonstration. Text: FREE HEALTH CARE ACT UP STOP FORCED HIV TESTING OF HEALTH CARE WORKERS JOIN A NATIONAL DAY OF PROTEST, WEDNESDAY SEPT. 11 MEET AT 3:30 PM, BEEKMAN HOSPITAL, BEEKMAN ST. AND WILLIAMS ST. A TRAIN TO BROADWAY-NASSAU; 2-3-4-5 TO FULTON STREET
• "Government, Doctors Suppress Life Saving AIDS Treatment"
  A full page article in the communist newspaper The Workers Vanguard describing the delays in publication of medical research indicating the effectiveness of steroid hormone treatment for pneumonia in patients with AIDS and expressing general frustration at the logistical and political obstacles to the distribution of new drugs to treat AIDS. The article also describes medical researchers' failure to collaborate with community based doctors and researchers, as well as delays in communication of breakthroughs in testing and treatment in service of individual professional ambitions, inflexible regulatory processes, and private pharmaceutical interests. The author links impediments in the availability of new treatments to healthcare disparities faced by LGBTQ and BIPOC populations. The article occupies the entire seventh page of the December 14, 1990 edition of the Workers Vanguard.
• Correctional officers guarding AIDS patients at hospital ward
  Two Westchester County correctional officers in New York are pictured wearing the special protective equipment designed to guard AIDS patients in the hospital ward. Officer on left wears a face mask, hair net, and protective gown. Officer on right stands with hands on hips and wears a face shield, helmet, and a padded suit.
• Undertakers Unit Warns of AIDS
  A short New York Times article about the New York State Funeral Directors Association formalizing their policy toward the separate treatment of those killed by AIDS. New York City funeral homes regularly refused to take in the bodies of AIDS victims throughout the early 1980s, furthering AIDS phobia even after death. This article is short and placed at the bottom right corner of the paper's 27th page.
• Hurt. Anger. Fear. Loneliness.
  AIDS awareness poster highlighting the social stigma and isolation experienced by People With AIDS. A man's face is pictured over the large majority of the poster, staring directly at the viewer. A smaller photo in the poster's bottom left corner pictures a man folding his head into his arms. Both photos are in black and white. Text reads: "Hurt. Anger. Fear. Loneliness. It's only human when you have AIDS. Please understand people with AIDS."
• Excerpt from "American Notes," by Charles Dickens
  This excerpt from Charles Dickens' "American Notes," details the author's trip to Blackwell's Island and his horrible time seeing the ghastly conditions of the Lunatic Asylum.
• Nellie Bly Excerpt from "Sympathy, Madness, and Crime: How Four Nineteenth-Century Journalists Made the Newspaper Women's Business"
  Excerpt on p. 88 from the chapter titled, "Making a Spectacle of Herself"
• Map of Blackwells Island bounded by West Channel and East Channel (Plate # 41)
  This is an 1879 map of Blackwell's Island featuring the layout of medical and penal facilities. The specifically designated, individual buildings can be seen here as well as the fact that this community is geographically isolated by its island nature.
• Demonstrate: NYCHA's Gonna Getcha Evicted for Being Gay
  Poster created by ACT UP New York in advance of a learn-in event on Homelessness and AIDS at their Center at 208 W. 13th St. The poster is a collage of several illustrations and its text reads: "The New York City Housing Authority has just this year agreed to allow a tenant's lover to be placed on her/his lease. This privilege has been routinely denied to lesbian and gay couples, who have instead endured repeated harassment by Housing Authority management. In New York, coming out may still mean being thrown out. Get informed."
• Photograph from Blackwell's Island, Women's Ward
  This resource depicts the Women's Hospital Ward at Blackwell's Island. Viewers see a group of women clustered together, hunched over their meals. The wide-eyed, vacant stares shed negative light onto the seemingly pitiful portrait sitters.