LeRoy Whitfield, 36; Activist Wrote on AIDS in the Black Community

LeRoy Whitfield, 36, an activist and writer who focused on AIDS among black Americans, died Sunday at North General Hospital in Manhattan from complications related to the disease. He was diagnosed with the HIV virus in 1990, but refused to take antiretroviral medication because of side effects.

Whitfield wrote that HIV had risen in the black community partly because of public housing, poverty and violence. But he also debunked an idea expressed by some of a white conspiracy to spread AIDS among African Americans. Most recently, he illustrated problems by writing about his own illness.

“AIDS is the gripping issue of the gay community,” he wrote in the September 1997 issue of Positively Aware magazine. “For African Americans, it’s the atrocity du jour.”

According to the 2000 Census, blacks make up 12% of the U.S. population. But they have accounted for 40% of the 929,985 estimated AIDS cases diagnosed since 1981 by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Born in Chicago, Whitfield attended the University of Chicago and DePaul University. He began his career as an associate editor of Positively Aware, which is based in Chicago. He moved to New York City in 2000 and worked as a senior editor at POW, a magazine for HIV-positive people, before becoming a freelance writer for Vibe, HIV Plus and other magazines.