WETUMPKA, Ala. (AP) - Latrice Anderson clutched her fists, swung her head and tried to hold back her tears. "Oh God, I have AIDS. What am I going to do? I'm going to die!" she cried to her doctor.
Anderson, an inmate in the HIV/AIDS unit at Tutwiler women's prison in Wetumpka, was portraying a character in a drama Monday as part of National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day. The actors hoped the play would help dispel myths about HIV transmission, and it took on new importance when prison officials announced the HIV unit women will soon be allowed into trade school classes with other inmates.
Prior to the announcement, they had been the only HIV inmates in the nation not allowed to attend training classes with general population prisoners.
"It was important for the rest of the inmates to see this. We are going to integrate these ladies into the trade school classes and there are a lot of myths about HIV," said Warden Gladys Deese.
Dana Harley, an HIV inmate who wrote and directed the play, said she has not sensed hostility from the general population at the prison.
"They're just cautious, because they don't know everything about it," she said, adding that the HIV unit publishes a monthly HIV/AIDS awareness newsletter that is handed out to the other inmates.
The performance Monday before about 100 inmates from the general prison population earned several bursts of applause. But a final standing ovation came after the play when Deese announced that the 22 HIV inmates would be included in the vocational classes in May -- signaling acceptance from the prisoners outside the HIV unit.
"I learned we can succeed no matter what we're going through," said Tonya Sasper, a general population inmate.
The women of the HIV unit, which is predominantly black, focused their play on a black woman finding out she got HIV from her husband, who had an affair with an HIV-infected gay man -- an increasingly common scenario within the black community, according to some researchers. HIV/AIDS is infecting blacks at a disproportionate rate. During 2000-2003, HIV/AIDS rates for black females were 19 times the rates for white females and rates for black males were seven times those for white males, according to the most recent figures by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Researchers point to several factors that put blacks at risk: poverty, lack of health care, drug use -- but failure to discuss sexual histories and lack of protection during sex is driving the alarming numbers, the CDC reports. A 2003 study of HIV patients revealed that 34 percent of black men reported having sex with women after having sex with a man. And male-to-male sex accounts for 31.9 percent of the black male HIV/AIDS cases in Alabama, according to the state Department of Public Health.
Harley told the Tutwiler prison audience that black men secretly having gay sex is "public enemy No. 1 to every sister."
Harley, who plans to be an HIV/AIDS counselor upon her release in 2022 for a robbery conviction, said the black community should talk about safe-sex practices and different sexualities more openly within their families to erase the stigma surrounding homosexuality and bisexuality. She also encouraged the general prison population to get tested when they are released because the virus may not have shown up when they were examined upon entering the prison.
"They test you once you get here, but some of you have been here for years," she said.
The HIV inmates also shared their real-life stories about how they contracted the virus during a support group session worked into the play. Around the circle, stories of hope emerged.
Some were infected before giving birth, but new medicines prevented their children from catching the virus. Others had lived without symptoms for years and still felt healthy.
When asked why they made that part of the play real and not fiction, Notoshia Boykins said it was important for the other inmates to understand that anyone can be infected.
"What happened to us, we don't want it to happen to anybody else," said Boykins, who found out she had HIV when she entered Tutwiler a year ago to serve an 18-month sentence on an assault conviction. Angela Farley, who is serving a five-year sentence on a drug conviction, said finding out she had HIV forced her to sober up. She hoped her story encouraged the other women to steer clear of drugs and promiscuity when they leave Tutwiler.
I am healthier with HIV than I was without it on the outside, you know what I mean?" she said.
