Philadelphia AIDS Oral History Project

The Philadelphia AIDS Oral History Project (PAOHP) is a collaborative effort led by a Community Advisory Committee under the leadership of the John J. Wilcox, Jr. Archives with the support of key institutional partners including the AIDS Library of Philadelphia (today the Critical Path Learning Center at Philadelphia FIGHT), the Dornsife School of Public Health at Drexel University, and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. The project strives to collect and make accessible to the public stories of early responders to the AIDS epidemic in Philadelphia, both individuals with HIV/AIDS and those who developed support and services from the mid-1980s through the early 1990s. The project places an emphasis on capturing stories that have traditionally not been heard. The goal of the project is to collect multiple oral history interviews and make them accessible online through digital recordings and searchable transcripts.

The beginnings of the Philadelphia AIDS Oral History Project may be traced back to a session titled “Developing Partnerships to Collect, Preserve and Study AIDS Oral History” at the conference Fighting Back: Defending the LGBT Mind and Body in Pennsylvania, organized by the William Way LGBT Community Center and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania in October 2015. Following this conference a planning committee was convened by the AIDS Library of Philadelphia at Philadelphia FIGHT and the first interviews were conducted in the summer of 2016. Since that time, operations of the project have moved to the John J. Wilcox, Jr. Archives at William Way LGBT Community Center.

Interviews have been conducted in groupings by theme to include: those associated with the organization We the People; women who were early responders; faith leaders and advocates; and medical and health care professionals. Additional interviews are done on an ad hoc basis. To date, the PAOHP has completed nearly 50 oral history interviews. These will be added to the site as they are edited and prepared for online access.

We present these oral history interviews as part of the historical record but recognize that they cannot serve as the sole source of information on the history of HIV/AIDS in Philadelphia. They are the personal recollections and opinions of the individuals who agreed to be interviewed. Some interviews may contain language, ideas, or stereotypes that are outdated, offensive, exoticizing, or unaffirming. And of course, discussions of HIV and AIDS can be quite serious. As such, we encourage those accessing these materials to listen and read with care.