Gilberto Gerald

Gilberto Gerald (born November 27, 1950), more commonly known as Gil, He came out as gay while studying architecture at the Pratt Institute in New York City, where he was the president of a fraternity. Roque Gerald, the former director of the Washington, D.C. Child and Family Services Agency, is one of his younger brothers. His older brother, Alpha Gerald, died in August 1985.

Activism After graduating from the Pratt Institute with a bachelor's degree in architecture, Gerald moved to Washington, D.C. and worked as an architect.

Gerald was a co-founder of the National Coalition of Black Lesbians and Gays (NCBLG) in 1978 (initially named the National Coalition of Black Gays), alongside other activists including ABilly S. Jones-Hennin, Darlene Garner, Delores P. Berry, Louis Hughes, Rev. Renee McCoy, and John Gee. The goal of the organization was to support the interests of Black gays and lesbians, since many LGBTQ organizations were discrimatory towards them. Along with activist Virginia Apuzzo, Gerald helped ensure that Audre Lorde spoke at the march.

In 1986, the NCBLG held the National Conference on AIDS in the Black Community at the D.C. convention center, resulting in the creation of the National Minority AIDS Council in 1987, which Gerald founded alongside activists including Carl Bean and Craig G. Harris.

During the National Conference on AIDS in the Black Community, Gerald (with activists like Suki Ports and Carl Bean) spoke for two and a half hours with C. Everett Koop, the U.S. Surgeon General, who had not previously been aware of the disproportionate impact of AIDS on communities of color. This conversation resulted in additions to Koop's report, "Understanding AIDS," which was mailed to every home in the nation in 1988.

This same year, Gerald left the NCBLG, which disbanded a few years later. On the disbanding, Gerald said that he believed that the organization just hadn't been designed to address the issues of HIV/AIDS.

Gerald was the director of minority affairs for the National AIDS Network in Washington, DC, focusing on the needs of Black and gay people living with HIV/AIDS. During this time, he spoke as an educator on AIDS in the gay community on multiple occasions.

After moving to Los Angeles, California in 1989, Gerald became the executive director of the National Minority AIDS Council when Carl Bean stepped down. His writing and essays have appeared in other anthologies and magazines, including several connected to activist and writer Joseph Beam, as well as the NCBLG's magazine Black/Out.

One of his presentations that Gerald made during his time with the National AIDS Network in Washington, DC, made at a seminar at the SUNY Health and Science Center at Brooklyn, was adapted into an article and published in the Journal of the National Medical Association in April 1989.

In January 2024, Gerald appeared on an episode of WNYC Studios' Blindspot podcast titled Mourning in America alongside people like Valerie Reyes-Jimenez, Phill Wilson, and Dr. Anthony Fauci to discuss the history of the HIV/AIDS crisis. "The Trouble I've Seen" (Freedom in This Village: Twenty-Five Years of Black Gay Men's Writing, 1979 to the Present, E. Lynn Harris, Carroll & Graf, 2005)