A Black journalist, the AIDS crisis, and a bleak reminder of the hidden pain behind double lives

Becoming a successful journalist meant learning how to get white people I was interviewing to see past my Blackness and answer my questions. It meant realizing that some situations might require me to adapt not only my natural personality but even my style of clothing. Making those adjustments sometimes reminded me of the sociologist W.E.B. DuBois, who, 150 years ago, said Black people out of necessity live double lives — behaving one way among themselves and quite another around white folks.

Of course, it’s not just Black people who choose to live double lives to fit in, to be successful, to make friends, and to be loved.

I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit — Ecclesiastes 1:14

God seems to like catching our attention when we least expect it.

On an otherwise unremarkable summer day in 1996, my phone rang at the Baltimore Sun. I was doing some research to write an editorial about a topic I no longer remember, but I will never forget what happened next.

I answered the phone as I usually did — not by reciting my name or the newspaper’s but by sounding as if I were lounging in a chair at home. “Hello,” I said. “Hello,” a man responded before hurriedly reciting a speech he likely had rehearsed many times before dialing my number. “My name is Ricky Marquis. I’m a friend of your brother Calvin.”

I immediately felt nervous. Calvin lived 3,000 miles away in San Francisco, and none of his friends had ever called me. Something must be wrong. Was he in trouble? Was he sick? None of my fears prepared me for Ricky’s next words.

“Calvin doesn’t know I’m calling,” he said, “but there’s something you need to know. Calvin is sick. He’s dying. Of AIDS.”

The rest of that conversation remains lost in fog. I don’t remember how I responded. My cubicle was designed to resemble a small office with just enough room for a desk, file cabinet, and a second chair for visitors, but the partition walls separating it from the other cubicles were paper-thin and didn’t extend to the ceiling. Anything I said could be overheard, and I didn’t want anyone to hear me if I started crying.

When Ricky finished, I thanked him, sat at my desk for about an hour, and then went home to tell my wife, Denice, what had happened. I wiped tears from my eyes as I drove, not just because Calvin was dying but because the youngest of Lewis and Janye Jackson’s five sons had tried to keep the truth that he was gay hidden from his family — fearing they would no longer love him.

When I got home from work, I called Calvin, who apparently was sleeping or didn’t want to talk to me. His roommate, Peter, picked up the phone, which in itself was confirmation of their true relationship. He and Calvin had shared an apartment for several years, but I knew little about Peter other than the fact that he was white.

Peter said neither he nor Calvin knew Ricky was going to call me but that he was relieved to no longer be an accomplice to Calvin’s keeping a secret from his family. I said I wanted to come to San Francisco, and Peter said I should but that it didn’t need to happen immediately. A few days later I got a letter from Peter that detailed all he had done for my brother.

“I have long been an advocate of Calvin telling you what is going on. But whenever I raise the issue, Calvin has always rejected it outright, saying it would give Janye a heart attack. His doctor did talk to Calvin last week and suggested that now was probably a good time to notify the family and that she would be happy to volunteer if he so desired.

“Calvin was all smiles until she left, at which point he got very angry and told me she had overstepped her bounds and who did she think she is. Well, I have not been forcing the issue since I am the one living here. But Rick Marquis took things in his own hands and contacted you, and I am happy that I don’t have to be a guardian of this family secret any longer. I realize that you now have to agonize with this situation, but in the long run it is better that it happen now rather than after the fact.”

God seems to like catching our attention when we least expect it.

Peter’s letter didn’t prepare me for how frail Calvin looked when I got to San Francisco about two weeks later. Seeing my little brother in their small apartment, propped up with pillows in a hospital bed, I thanked God that he moved to California after college. I don’t think an AIDS patient in the 1990s would have received the same elevated level of care in Alabama.

I was only going to be in San Francisco a few days, but Calvin insisted that Peter show me some of its fabled tourist sites — the Golden Gate Bridge, the Presidio, Fisherman’s Wharf, and their favorite barbecue joint. No doubt Peter would have preferred to stay by Calvin’s bedside, but he tried to fulfill all my dying brother’s requests. Even without the legal status of a spouse, Peter had maneuvered through California’s health-care system to get Calvin every benefit he qualified for.

I should have spent more time getting to know Peter. Instead, Calvin and I fell into our old habit of revisiting old memories. We both knew he was dying, but neither of us wanted to talk about that. So, we didn’t. When it finally came time to return home, I told Calvin I loved him, hugged him in his bed, and headed out the door to prepare for my flight back to Baltimore. Just like at Daddy’s funeral, I didn’t cry. The Jackson boys aren’t supposed to do that.

Two months later, I got the telephone call from Peter telling me Calvin had died. I began 1996 with four brothers, never thinking for a second that I would end it with two. I wrote about Calvin’s death in a column published a week later in the Baltimore Sun. Headlined “The Secrets That We Keep,” it began with a description of how I received the news:

Awake at 2:30 last Saturday night, I was struck by how well I could see across the length and breadth of my bedroom. A flood of moonlight filtered through the blinds, giving every object a shadowy dimension that suggested an attachment to another world.

I put on my glasses, walked barefoot across the cool, hardwood floor and peeked out the window. The sky was actually cloudy save for an occasional break, the largest of which allowed the moon to fully display the illuminating power that according to legend can drive men mad.

The sun would blind us if we similarly looked directly at it. But the moon, in its brilliantly pale fluorescence, demands that we stare it in the face. I opened the blinds wider to get a better look at the glowing disc with dark craters that make it a work of art.

Eventually, though, without slippers or robe, I started to get cold. And was reluctantly reminded of what woke me up in the first place. A call informing me that my younger brother had died.

Calvin’s story wasn’t unique. An estimated 900,000 people in the United States were HIV-positive when he died in 1996. More than 31,000 of those patients died that year, which was 50% less than the year before. That’s thanks to previously unavailable antiviral drug therapies. Many who died didn’t know they were sick until it was too late. Others kept their diagnosis to themselves, hoping for a miracle cure.

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There’s still no cure for AIDS, but drug therapies still in their development stage when Calvin died are keeping people alive now by dramatically reducing the amount of virus in their blood. Such drugs not only are more affordable; they are also being sold by pharmaceutical companies in TV ads featuring obviously gay couples.

So much has changed. I can’t help thinking that were Calvin still alive, he would be healthier and happier. He no longer would feel the need to keep his truth a secret.

Harold Jackson spent two decades at The Inquirer and served as editorial page editor from 2007 to 2017. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing in 1991 and retired from the Houston Chronicle in 2020. This essay is adapted from his memoir, “Under the Sun: A Black Journalist’s Journey,” which will be published April 15 by the University of Alabama Press.