NAACP president
calls for HIV testing

Bruce Gordon, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, on Saturday at the organization's national convention in Washington, D.C., called on black community leaders to do more to fight AIDS and promote HIV antibody testing among African-Americans, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. The national conference began with a health symposium titled "State of Emergency; Our Emergency: The HIV/AIDS Crisis in the Black Community."

And to prove his commitment to HIV issues, Gordon, along with NAACP chairman Julian Bond, took rapid HIV antibody tests at the gathering.

"It is such a big deal to have high-profile people acknowledging the disease and being tested," Phill Wilson, executive director of the Los Angeles-based Black AIDS Institute, told the Chronicle. "It tells our community that we are embracing the epidemic, that we have gotten over the stigma."

The conference also included a performance about AIDS by actress and singer Sheryl Lee Ralph and a screening of the documentary Faces, which focuses on six HIV-positive black women living in D.C. (The Advocate)