AIDS AND THE AFRICAN-AMERICAN CHURCH
Cover Story, Original Broadcast Date: January 11, 2002 (Show #519):

How is the African-American Church is dealing with the AIDS epidemic, especially in the South? Nationwide, women now account for a fourth of all newly diagnosed AIDS cases, double the percentage from 10 years ago. A disproportionate number of those women are poor, young and African American. And this poses a particular dilemma for most African-American churches. Yet many of these churches, a major force in the rural South, have been reluctant to address AIDS prevention, fearing it might undermine the church's traditional bible-based teaching on extramarital sex. Judy Valente travels to Mississippi and Tennessee to talk with AIDS victims and clergy about what efforts need to be undertaken by the African-American churches to help in the education and the prevention of this deadly virus. According to Reverend Melvin Lewis of the Locust Grove Baptist Church in Mississippi, "Many peoples feel that that is a subject that maybe ought to be left out of the church, left in the social community . . . when in fact, it is one of our responsibilities as well."

Featured (in alphabetical order): Dr. Hamza Brimah, AIDS Specialist Lady Corder-Chapman, Parishioner, Metropolitan Interdenominational Church Norma Coleman, Parishioner, Metropolitan Interdenominational Church Reverend Milton Glass, New Green Grove Baptist Church Judy Jordan, Parishioner, Metropolitan Interdenominational Church Reverend Melvin Lewis, Pastor, Locust Grove Missionary Baptist Church Easha Roney, Patient, Magnolia Medical Center Reverend Edwin Sanders, Pastor, Metropolitan Interdenominational Church