As the world is marking the 26^th anniversary of the first reported cases of AIDS this summer, there is a story that is often ignored: AIDS is an epidemic in the black community. While many black American leaders and celebrities have embraced the epidemics impose in Africa, few of them have devoted energy to helping solve the problem on American soil.

At the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, cases were largely found in gay, white men. But recently the numbers involving white, gay men in America have declined. From the early days of the epidemic, White, gay men have formed activist groups to force policy changes on faster FDA approval on experimental drugs. Homosexual black men in America have few to no activist groups working to give them the freedom that they feel they need.

"When you start talking about sex there's a problem," said Debra Fraser-Howze of the National Black Leadership Commission on AIDS. "And when you start talking about homosexuality there's a real problem. Nobody wants to deal with it. I know a few communities that's conservative as the African American community - extremely conservative --particularly around sex."

"I know a few communities that's conservative as the African American community - extremely conservative --particularly around sex" - Debra Fraser-Howze

West Tennessee has a larger problem with the AIDS and HIV epidemic involving black people than does the rest of the state. Though East Tennessee has a smaller black community, West Tennessee has much higher numbers of AIDS cases with 3,591 and 5,333 HIV cases.

Through December 2005, 13,362 cases of HIV and 10,182 cases of AIDS were reported in Tennessee.  Knoxville accounts for 644 AIDS cases and 777 HIV cases.

The 2005 U.S. Census found that one in four blacks are living in poverty and recent studies show a link between poverty and the risk of HIV infection. People living in poverty generally receive lower-quality healthcare, which means that their HIV infection can progress into AIDS are a quicker rate.

Blacks with AIDS do not often live as long as people of other race groups with AIDS. Barriers that affect them from treatment and living with AIDS include poverty (about 25 percent), sexually transmitted diseases and negative attitudes toward people living with HIV and AIDS according to the CDC.

Black men are contracting HIV at an alarming rate. Many of them are getting the HIV virus because they are having unprotected sex with other men who have HIV, sharing injection drugs with someone who has HIV, or having unprotected sex with women who have HIV.

The CDC has information about community denial about injection drug use and homosexuality. Although black women contract HIV at faster rates than white women, injection drug use accounts for 34 percent of the HIV and AIDS cases among white women while it accounts for 24 percent among black women.

Black women, the most common way of contracting HIV is having unprotected sex with a man who is HIV positive.

A man living on the "down-low" has been another cause of many women becoming infected with HIV. There have been many cases where a man has denied the fact that he likes sleeping with men to the woman that he is involved with because he does not think he is homosexual.

Men who are living life on the "down-low" have been giving women HIV at faster rates than they are giving it to men who are also having sex with men.

Many of the men who are having sex with other men do not tell anyone, not even the women they are involved with, for fear that their lifestyle will be frowned upon by the black community.

Many members of the black community deem homosexuality unnatural and degrading to the race and some men engage in anal intercourse with men who are HIV-positive and then spread the infection to their female partners.

Help for HIV-positive and AIDS infected persons is available though an organization called the Hope Center. The Hope Center was established in 1996 to help HIV-positive and AIDS infected persons in Knoxville. Located in the Fort Sanders Regional Medical Center, the Hope Center's goals are "to provide direct supportive care and advocacy at no charge to patients and families affected by HIV and AIDS."