1. In September 1981, Campbell became the 16th person in San Francisco to be diagnosed with Kaposi's sarcoma, when that was a proxy for an AIDS diagnosis.
18 Facts About Bobbi Campbell
1. 2.
Bobbi Campbell rapidly became one of the leading activists co-founding People With AIDS San Francisco in 1982 and then, the following year, with HIV+ men from across the US, he co-wrote the Denver Principles, the defining manifesto of the People With AIDS Self-Empowerment Movement.
3.
Bobbi Campbell lobbied Margaret Heckler, Secretary of Health and Human Services in the Reagan administration over both practical issues and stigmatising medical practices affecting people with AIDS.
4.
Bobbi Campbell continued to campaign for LGBT+ rights, speaking outside the 1984 Democratic National Convention a month before his death from cryptosporidiosis.
5.
Bobbi Campbell moved from Seattle to San Francisco in 1975, getting a job in a hospital near The Castro and immersing himself in the political and social life of the community, which had become a center for the LGBT community over the previous few years.
6.
Bobbi Campbell was formally diagnosed as having KS by dermatologist Marcus Conant on October 8,1981.
7.
On January 10,1982, Bobbi Campbell was interviewed by Alfred for The Gay Life program on KSAN-FM, with doctors Marcus Conant and Paul Volberding; the interview has been archived by the GLBT Historical Society.
8.
Bobbi Campbell became involved with the Shanti Project and persuaded reluctant physicians to allow him to meet and counsel AIDS patients at Conant's KS clinic.
9.
Bobbi Campbell and his colleagues' push to persuade service organizations to sponsor gay men with AIDS to attend the Conference was a key moment in the People With AIDS Self-Empowerment Movement.
10.
At the first Clinical Nursing Conference on AIDS, in Washington, DC, on October 7,1983, Bobbi Campbell presented a poster session, "dressed for the part" in white pants and a lab coat.
11.
Bobbi Campbell gave one of his last speeches at the National March for Lesbian and Gay Rights when the 1984 Democratic National Convention was held in San Francisco in July.
12.
Bobbi Campbell was introduced as a feminist, a registered Democrat and a Person With AIDS; he had served as a board director of the National AIDS Foundation and on the steering committee of the Federation of AIDS-related Organizations, founded the National Association of People With AIDS and testified in front of Congressional subcommittees.
13.
Bobbi Campbell told the crowd that he had hugged his boyfriend on the cover of Newsweek, and then kissed Hilliard on stage "to show Middle America that gay love is beautiful," criticizing the Christian right for using scripture to justify their homophobia.
14.
Two weeks later, Bobbi Campbell appeared on CBS Evening News in a live satellite interview with Dan Rather.
15.
At noon on August 15,1984, exactly a month after his DNC speech and after two days on life support in intensive care, Bobbi Campbell died at San Francisco General Hospital when his blood pressure dropped rapidly.
16.
Bobbi Campbell's body was taken back to Washington state and interred at New Tacoma Cemetery in Tacoma, Washington.
17.
Bobbi Campbell had kept a journal throughout his life; Angie Lewis arranged for the journal to be donated to the UCSF Archives and Special Collections.
18.
Bobbi Campbell was portrayed by Kevin McHale in the 2017 docudrama miniseries When We Rise written by Dustin Lance Black to chronicle the gay rights movement.