AIDS has left a monumental impact on American society that historians have only begun to analyze.  HIV/AIDS first affected primarily white gay men and injection drug users; AIDS was a death sentence.  PWAs (people with AIDS) often endured inadequate care and searing indignities.  But they and their allies effected profound changes in an often hostile political climate, transformed medical care and drug testing, and advanced the cause of LGBTQ rights.  AIDS activists' heroism ranks as one of the most significant political movements in recent American history.

  Anti-retroviral drugs converted HIV/AIDS into a chronic disease -- a "Lazarus effect" -- but many PWAs suffer long-term survivor syndrome.  Meanwhile HIV/AIDS came to affect, disproportionately, people of color.

  HIV/AIDS reflects every scale in historical analysis, from the most intimate -- whom you choose to love, how you have sex, how you provide care -- to global health policies.  To begin to redress this historical omission, we propose a conceptual framework to address the history of AIDS in the context of social justice.  Drawing on archival and secondary sources, we analyze the shifting politics, culture, and demography of HIV/AIDS and how the heroism of a stigmatized community transformed hostility into hope.