President Barack Obama commuted the sentence of Chelsea Manning, reducing her 35-year prison term to seven years served with a release date of May 17, 2017. The commutation came after Manning attempted suicide twice in 2016 while serving her sentence as a transgender woman in a men’s military …
By early 1987, over 25,000 Americans have died of AIDS-related illnesses, yet President Reagan has still not delivered a major public address on the epidemic despite six years of crisis. Reagan does not give his first comprehensive AIDS speech until May 1987, by which time the death toll exceeds …
Hollywood icon Rock Hudson dies at age 59 of AIDS complications, becoming the first major U.S. celebrity to die of the disease and forcing President Reagan to finally acknowledge the epidemic publicly. Hudson’s death marks a turning point: Reagan had maintained complete public silence on AIDS …
The CDC publishes the first report on unusual immune system failures in five previously healthy gay men in Los Angeles, marking the medical recognition of what becomes the AIDS epidemic. President Ronald Reagan’s administration responds with years of complete public silence while the epidemic …