By the mid-1980s, New York was in the grips of a rising pandemic that instilled fear throughout the city. Although scientists had discovered clues that a previously unknown virus existed earlier, a report written in 1981 noting a rare lung infection in five previously healthy gay men in the Los Angeles area was the first real alarm. Within the year, other medical professionals had begun sounding alarm bells about similar opportunistic diseases infecting otherwise healthy people. Soon, cases were reported in New York.

By 1983, the disease had been labeled as AIDS by the medical community, and it was sometimes colloquially and derogatorily known as the “Gay Plague.” At the time, the disease seemed to target gay men, sex workers, intravenous drug users, and other people marginalized by mainstream society. The Reagan administration chose to quell public fear by assuring the population that the disease only concerned gay men and drug users.

As a result, there was initial reluctance to fund medical research. Lack of education, ignorance, and other factors caused the pandemic to grow. It was not until 1983 that research into the disease received federal funding in the United States and front-page coverage in the New York Times. By 1985, community activist groups had begun their own education and outreach programs to try and stop the now-rapid spread of the virus as well as fund research projects and care for the sick and dying.