The Incubation of the Task Force: Narrative Re-positioning for Being an AIDS Prevention Framing Institution Unspoiling Black Gay Identity

In 1987, the <i>National Association of Black and White Men Together</i> (NABWMT) received funding to create the <i>National Task Force on AIDS Prevention</i>, the first federally funded organization to do HIV/AIDS prevention directed to Black gay and bisexual men. This article is based on a narrative ethnography of NABWMT, including analysis of ten years of newsletters, 36 oral history interviews, and organizational documents from five different archives, and focuses on the narrative production of the task force. My analysis demonstrates how the task force initially positioned itself as part of NABWMT, narratively practicing interracial gay anti-racism, but then narratively re-positioned themselves as primarily Black gay led and focused and narratively practicing Black gay sexual knowledge, affirmation and subjectivity as prevention. This article expands our understanding of intersectional responses to HIV/AIDS, offering an account of narrative re-positioning from gay interracial intervention to intraventional work of Black gay men for Black gay men, contributing to our understanding of intersectional AIDS framing institutions and the organizational unspoiling of Black gay identity.