Pedro, Eazy-E, and Keith Haring: How '90s Kids Learned About AIDS

Keith Haring's advocacy and death, 1988-1991

Artist and social activist Keith Haring was diagnosed with AIDS in 1988, and immediately began using the imagery of his own experience to raise awareness about the disease. Besid

Magic Johnson, 1991

In November 1991, Los Angeles Lakers point guard Magic Johnson held a press conference and announced that he had contracted HIV and was retiring (al

Pop music's victims: Freddie Mercury and Eazy E, 1991 and 1995

Two very different musicians succumbed to AIDS in plain view of the American public. Freddie Mercury, of the band Queen, hid his HIV status for a long time befo

A pair of Oscar-winning Tom Hanks movies: Philadelphia and Forrest Gump, 1993 and 1994

Leave it to Tom Hanks to pull on the heart strings of America. He won an Academy Award for his portrayal of a gay man with AIDS who

Pedro Zamora from The Real World, 1994

Pedro was a character on a 1994 season of The Real World who was openly gay and living with the HIV virus. 

KIDS, 1994

This horrifying mish-mash of urban boredom, virgin fetishes, and skater kids drunk off 40s scared the shit out of every teen and preteen in U.S. It especially scared me, a New Yorker who had also heard 14-year-old ki

TLC's "Waterfalls," 1995

This ubiquitous song and video didn't scream out its AIDS theme, but the "3 letters" that "took him to his fin

Boys on the Side, 1995

In this female-centered buddy movie, Mary Louise Parker plays a WASPy realtor that got burned by a bartender with AIDS. More than any movie, it went through the painstaking stages of the disease