Shauneshia Taylor, second from left, listens to a presentation on HIV and AIDS in the black community at the Northwest Center. Friday's theme will carry forward to today's Martin Luther King Jr. events.

greg bryan / arizona daily star

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The silence that some say shrouds the scourge of HIV and AIDS in the black community will be broken today.

Black leaders will call attention to HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, at the annual Tucson celebration that honors slain civil-rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.

The setting is a fitting place to start a serious public discussion on the devastation of acquired immune deficiency syndrome among blacks, said Clarence Boykins, executive director of the Tucson-Southern Arizona Black Chamber of Commerce.

"It's a deadly disease, a life-changing type of disease that we don't talk about openly," he said. "We need to eliminate the stigmas that prevent us from talking about it."

The theme of today's event, "Silence = Death: We Must Eliminate HIV," takes a cue from a speech King gave in 1967, when he spoke out against the Vietnam War, Boykins said.

"If Dr. King were alive today, I think he would feel that we are doing the right thing by utilizing this time to deal with a problem that's hurting his people."

HIV and AIDS are ravaging the black population, more so than any other racial and ethnic group in the country.

Even though blacks comprise 13 percent of the nation's population, they accounted for about half of the people with HIV and AIDS in 2004, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

That year in Arizona, 1,168 of the 10,939 — 10.7 percent — cases of HIV and AIDS were among blacks, state data shows. The group in 2004 totaled under 4 percent of the state's 5.7 million population.

"We are a community in crisis," said Yvette Miller, chief medical officer for the Arizona region of the American Red Cross. "It is important to step up to the plate and get ourselves educated and share what we learn with each other."

Gwendolyn Stephens, 49, said she didn't know much about the disease until after she contracted the AIDS virus in 2000. Four years later she developed AIDS, but she couldn't talk about it.

"I was ashamed."

When Stephens finally tried letting on that she had the disease, the Tucsonan said she felt ostracized.

"When I tried to tell people, they'd take it and throw it in your face and make you seem ugly and nasty."

Stephens said she got HIV from a man who raped her. She was in jail for drug-related crimes when she learned she was infected with HIV. She has learned to live with AIDS, Stephens said, and is on daily medication.

"It can happen to anybody because AIDS doesn't discriminate at all."

She no longer has a difficult time talking about her disease.

"Today, I don't get high, I don't drink, and I'm able to tell people who and what I am with pride," Stephens said.

Gezzele Martin of the Coalition for African American Health and Wellness, said more people in her community — from adolescents to adults — need to learn about prevention so they can stop engaging in risky behaviors such as unprotected sex.

The pressure among young blacks to become sexually active is perhaps greater that among other ethnic and racial groups, she said, and is one of the reasons for the disproportionately high number of HIV infections. Men having sex with men and the sharing of drug needles also are factors, she said.

"What we need to do is stop the progression, stop the transmission," Martin added. "We have to take responsibility for our community — we're not doing it because we're not talking about it."

The AIDS virus, which weakens the immune system, is spread through contact with blood, semen, vaginal fluids and breast milk.

Martin was among key members of the local black community who in November began discussing the need to bring to light the prevalence of HIV and AIDS locally and nationally. Last week, they put on educational workshops for small groups of youths and adults at the Northwest Center.

The activities were part of the King celebration, which culminates today with a three-mile march from the University of Arizona to Reid Park. It is where organizers hope their message will reach a larger crowd. Anonymous testing for the AIDS virus will be offered on site.

At the neighborhood center Friday, Shauneshia Taylor, 17, was surprised to hear how much HIV and AIDS affect her community.

"I don't like the statistics showing the high percentages of African-American women getting the disease," Taylor said.

She was with four other teenage girls — all from Santa Rita High School — at a workshop on the disease.

Danielle Abram and her fiance, Clarence Griffin, both volunteers with the Southern Arizona AIDS Foundation, separated myth from fact and urged the five teens to share their new knowledge with friends.

Tajha Smith, 17, said the workshop was an eye-opener.

"I'd heard about HIV and AIDS before, but it's shocking to hear some of this stuff."

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