The year was 1987. Phill Wilson was 31, a recent transplant to L.A. from his hometown of Chicago. A mysterious infection that weakened its hosts’ immune systems was killing people at a terrifying rate, while the Reagan administration downplayed and openly joked about the disease. Some major news outlets initially wrote off the emerging epidemic as a “gay plague,” insinuating that other Americans didn’t need to worry about it.

Wilson’s doctor told him that he was HIV-positive, had six months to live and that he should get his affairs in order.

Instead, Wilson decided to “focus on the living.”

“Let’s use the time I have to do something,” he recalls thinking.

“My life,” Wilson says now, at age 69, “is that something.”

Wilson went on to found L.A.’s Black AIDS Institute, using the nonprofit think tank to draw attention to the lack of outreach, prevention and treatment programs tailored to Black Americans — despite the disproportionate toll that AIDS had taken on them.

Wilson not only defied his doctor’s orders. He also defied the odds, surviving one of the world’s deadliest epidemics, along the way preaching the message of prevention and care, from demonstrations in the nation’s capital to the sanctified realm of the Black church.

It’s been 40 years since Angelenos took to the streets for the first time to raise money for research in the wake of screen legend Rock Hudson’s stunning announcement that he had AIDS in 1985. That’s why it’s so hard for Wilson to accept that today, as L.A. is set to hold its annual AIDS Walk on Oct. 12 in West Hollywood, a new era of death and grief could be on the horizon.

Just as success appears within reach to end fatalities from HIV/AIDS worldwide, the U.S. — the global leader in that battle — seems to be in retreat.

In recent months, Republicans in Congress have followed up on moves by the Trump administration by calling for deep cuts to federal funding for HIV/AIDS prevention and home treatment, leaving public health officials and LGBTQ+ nonprofits in L.A. and elsewhere with few options besides cutting staff and suspending programs. AIDS organizations worldwide are also alarmed over the administration’s gutting of foreign aid initiatives for nations in Africa and elsewhere that cannot afford to fight infectious diseases on their own.

Wilson worries that 40 years of work that he and other activists, public health experts and providers, and members of the LGBTQ+ community have done to mobilize will be reversed in the space of a presidential term.

Phill Wilson reflects on the friends who lost their lives to AIDS while standing next to what he calls “My Wall of Dead People.”

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

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“I never imagined that I would be 69; I never imagined that I would still be alive and healthy,” Wilson said. “And I also never imagined that the trajectory of the AIDS pandemic would take us from malicious neglect, during the Reagan years, to a powerful movement that changed the trajectory of treatment and care and prevention not just for HIV and AIDS but for chronic diseases and infectious diseases in general, to … a day when in fact our government was actively engaged in dismantling institutions and systems that … were actually saving lives.”

Wilson, who also sits on the board of trustees at amfAr, one of the top AIDS research foundations, has been lauded by Republican and Democratic presidents. He has also attended the funerals of too many friends killed by the disease to count — giving him both a global and a painfully personal perspective on a disease that has infected more than 88 million people and claimed more than 42 million lives worldwide, according to the 2024 L.A. Annual AIDS Surveillance Report.

AIDS-related illnesses have killed at least 30,000 people in Los Angeles County alone, according to a report from the county’s Commission on HIV.

There is still no cure for AIDS. But since the introduction of powerful antiretroviral drugs in the 1990s that allow those infected to continue living healthy lives — and more recent preventative treatments such as PrEP — fatalities have plunged. In 2020, the U.S. government set a goal of reducing AIDS fatalities by 90% over the following decade.

But a team of researchers from UCLA and other institutions recently concluded that the Trump administration’s plan to shutter the U.S. Agency for International Development, a foreign aid program, and rescind already-appropriated funding to it could lead to millions of people dying of HIV/AIDS over the next five years who could have been protected through HIV outreach, testing and lifesaving drugs.

“With the current policies in place, there is a very good chance that we’re going to see a huge spike in new infections and we’re going to return to the days of people dying of HIV and AIDS when that’s preventable,” Wilson said.

Closer to home in L.A., the successes have been uneven.

The racial disparities that sparked Wilson’s activism at the dawn of the pandemic have narrowed but still exist.

Black Angelenos make up just 8% of the county’s population but represented roughly 18% of HIV cases recorded between January 2023 and December 2024, the most recent period for which sufficient data were available on the county’s public health dashboard. Latinos made up about 60% of cases, though this group constitutes 49% of the county’s population.

Wilson doesn’t need these grim statistics to remind him of the stakes involved if HIV/AIDS funding gets cut.

His partner, Chris Brownlie, was diagnosed with AIDS in1985, and after four years of suffering, died of the illness. That wrenching experience prompted Wilson to become an activist full time.

Wilson survived his own near-death illness stemming from AIDS in 1995, thanks to a new treatment that kept the virus from replicating. By then he had grown used to attending AIDS vigils and delivering eulogies for others who died too soon. Eventually he became AIDS coordinator for the city of Los Angeles and director of policy and planning at AIDS Project Los Angeles, now called APLA Health.

Phill Wilson, founder and former head of the Black AIDS Institute, meets President Obama.

(Courtesy of Phill Wilson)

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Today, Wilson’s home radiates with colorful artworks from his private collection and vibrant African wood carvings climbing toward the loft ceiling. There are pictures of him shaking hands with Presidents George W. Bush, Clinton and Obama.

Facing Wilson as he speaks is a Kwaku Alston portrait of late South African President Nelson Mandela, commissioned when Wilson persuaded that nation’s first Black president to sit for a portrait session to celebrate him being honored by the Black AIDS Institute.

Situated among these bursts of color and patterns and Afrocentric pride, though, are photos of unspeakable losses.

It’s chilling to see the many images of fallen Black gay men — among them the poet and activist Essex Hemphill; Marlon Riggs, maker of a seminal 1989 film on the Black queer experience “Tongues Untied,” and the South African anti-apartheid and AIDS activist Simon Nkoli, who helped organize Africa’s first Pride march in 1990 — and realize how many of Wilson’s brothers in spirit and in struggle were cut down by the disease in their prime.

“My nephews call this wall my ‘Wall of Dead People,’” Wilson said, “because so many of the photographs are of people who are no longer with us, or photographs where I’m the only one alive.

“My motivation is to keep the memories of all of my friends who we lost during the AIDS pandemic alive,” he said, “to remind people that they were here, and they meant something and did work and they had lives and they had loves.”

Standing in front of a piece by artist Woodrow Nash, Phill Wilson describes the art that fills his home in Los Feliz.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

Wilson remembers how hard it was at first to promote HIV/AIDS awareness in L.A.’s Black community.

He had grown frustrated with the limited breadth of AIDS outreach in the 1980s and ‘90s. The whole model seemed too “white centric,” conspicuously lacking in outreach that took into account the obstacles that queer people of color faced. It was daunting enough to come out as gay in some Black and brown households, let alone speak openly about a deadly epidemic whose uncertain origins had fueled wild, often-racist conspiracy theories suggesting that Black people were chiefly responsible for its spread.

The idea of inviting LGBTQ+ advocates into your home to talk about prevention may have worked in settings where gay men were affluent (and mostly white), but many lower-income queer Angelenos (many of whom where nonwhite) still lived with their families.

He knew he needed an “unapologetically Black” game plan, which included co-founding the National Gay and Lesbian Leadership Forum, an organization whose meetings allowed Black AIDS activists in L.A. and other cities to network and exchange best practices with peers who looked like them and could relate to their life experiences.

Wilson, who grew up in the projects of Chicago’s South Side and attended a Black church, also tried to enlist L.A.’s Black pastors to help spread the word about AIDS in their neighborhoods. It was slow going at first.

He recalls breaking with protocol at one Black house of worship by taking to the raised lectern — traditionally the exclusive domain of the preacher — to warn worshipers about the risks of ignoring the deadly disease killing their sons, brothers, nephews and nieces.

His stern address was mainly met with silence. But as Wilson walked toward the exit, minister after minister held out a hand to take one of the educational fliers he’d brought to hand out.

“They already knew that AIDS had visited their churches,” Wilson said.

In July, Wilson was struck again by memories of days gone by when Jewel Thais-Williams, the founder of the legendary Black queer club Jewel’s Catch One on Pico Boulevard, died at age 86.

Wilson remembers when the club, now a mixed venue, was known as a sanctuary for the city’s Black and brown queer community. Williams presided as a surrogate mother and life coach for Black gays and lesbians, transgender Angelenos of color, people living with HIV who felt stigmatized because of their status, and those who didn’t necessarily feel at home in mostly white venues. Williams had also established the first housing complex in the U.S. for Black women living with HIV and their children and started a holistic wellness clinic for members of the city’s Black and brown communities.

Wilson attended Williams’ public memorial at “The Catch” in August, alongside hundreds of friends, loved ones, politicians, former drag performers and club staffers. Some older club patrons strode in with the aid of walking sticks, less agile than they used to be but determined to pay their respects to “Mama Jewel.”

Everyone dressed as if for Sunday morning service — but the event morphed midway into a Sunday afternoon tea dance, with the crowd grooving under the disco balls to gospel-inflected house music, evoking the roof-raising atmosphere that made the club famous back in the day.

Wilson took to the stage to pose with L.A. Mayor Karen Bass as she presented a proclamation declaring the club a historical landmark.

In some ways, that moment of light seems like a long time ago. The current situation for public health in L.A. and across the country feels much darker.

That said, Wilson has learned to find solace in times of sadness and dread by taking the long view.

Having weathered the Reagan administration’s negligence, twice outlived his own death sentence in the AIDS crisis and recovered from a stroke two years ago, he has no patience for those who wallow in hopelessness about the federal cuts.

What people must do now, Wilson says, is the same thing that catalyzed him and local leaders such as Williams in the initial war against AIDS: Find ways to help, refuse to be silent and heed a piece of advice that may not sound satisfying in the moment but has sustained him through bouts of indignation and grief: “This too shall pass.”

Wilson realizes that, much like in the ‘80s, not everyone in the queer community or society at large feels personally invested in the fight against HIV/AIDS. For them, he has another bit of wisdom: Just because a government engaged in upending practices and slashing programs has yet to attack you or those you love doesn’t mean you should be a bystander to the damage done to others.

Wilson recites a James Baldwin line from his “Open Letter to My Sister, Miss Angela Davis”: “For if they come for you in the morning, they will be coming for us at night.”

“We may not know it,” Wilson says, “but we all have skin in the game.”