JOAN GIBBS, who died on this date (b: 1953), was an activist and attorney who used her power — often on a pro bono basis — to fight HIV/AIDS and advance racial justice, women’s rights, and LGBTQ rights.
Gibbs was born in New York City, but spent her early youth in North Carolina before moving back to New York when she was 14 years old. By the time she was in high school, she became involved in activist movements, joining the Student Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, the Young Socialist Alliance, and a Black student group, she said in a 2012 interview with ACT UP’s Oral History Project. Gibbs earned a Bachelor’s Degree from Empire State College and a JD from Rutgers University.
Gibbs said she joined ACT UP, an activist group fighting to end AIDS, beginning in the 1980s when she attended a demonstration on Wall Street. She served as a legal observer for ACT UP and represented the group in court on multiple occasions, including when members were arrested in 1988 for occupying the New York City health commissioner’s office to protest the undercounting of individuals living with HIV, according to the National Lawyers Guild’s New York City Chapter. Gibbs also represented the Haitian American Anti-Defamation League when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) deemed the group to be a risk for HIV/AIDS.
Among others, Gibbs represented Black Liberation Army activist Sundiata Acoli, who spent decades in prison for the 1973 murder of New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster. Gibbs wrote a letter to California Representative Maxine Waters in 1998 to criticize the lawmaker’s vote in support of a resolution calling on Cuba to extradite Assata Shakur, also known as Joanne Chesimard, who was also convicted of the same murder as Acoli and fled to Cuba. Waters subsequently said she made a mistake and wrote a letter to then-Cuban president Fidel Castro saying she opposed the resolution.
Gibbs also has an impressive literary legacy as the founding editor of “Azalea: A Magazine by Third World Lesbians,” which presented fiction, poetry, and other forms by writers who included Audre Lorde, Sapphire, and Jewelle Gomez. It was published between 1977 and 1983, and is an early example of lesbians of color claiming their space in literature in a public way.
In 1980, Gibbs co-edited the anthology “Top Ranking: A Collection of Articles on Racism and Classism in the Lesbian Community.” Ada Gay Griffin, filmmaker of “A Litany of Survival: The Life and Work of Audre Lorde,” said, “While immersed in many movements for freedom and justice, Joan bravely championed LGBTQIA+ liberation as a Black lesbian leader, committed to organizing and raising the voices of Black women.”
Gibbs’ legacy extended far beyond her legal work. She was a founding leader of Dykes Against Racism Everywhere (DARE), which launched in 1979 in response to the murder of demonstrators in Greensboro, North Carolina who were protesting racism.