by Jacob Levenson

About the author: Jacob Levenson is a writer for Mother Jones.

Pastor Preston Washington is seated at a table with four other AIDS panelists at Canaan Baptist Church of Christ in Harlem. In front of him, bathed in pale fluorescent light, are more than 100 people from New York City’s black church community. It’s a Friday morning in early March 2000, and they have assembled around a dozen or so circular tables in a large, windowless meeting room to discuss the devastation AIDS is wreaking on African Americans. Washington feels tired; he and his staff have worked hard to coordinate their commencement breakfast for the national Black Church Week of Prayer for the Healing of AIDS.

Everyone who’s gathered this morning has been handed the latest...