Small Town Rage: Fighting Back in the Deep South
by Dr. David W. Hylan
Foreword by Mark S. King
In the 1980s and early 1990s, while the AIDS epidemic devastated communities across America, the Deep South remained wrapped in silence, fear, religion, politics, and stigma. In Shreveport, a small but determined group of activists refused to stay quiet.
Small Town Rage: Fighting Back in the Deep South tells the story of ACT UP Shreveport and the people who challenged indifference in one of the most conservative regions in the country. Through protests, confrontations, fundraising events, hospital visits, political battles, and deeply personal acts of courage, ordinary people became unlikely warriors in the fight for dignity, treatment, and survival.
Drawing from the award-winning documentary of the same name, Dr. David W. Hylan expands the story far beyond the film, weaving together firsthand testimonies, archival research, newspaper accounts, and personal memories into a powerful narrative about resistance, grief, friendship, and love during the height of the AIDS crisis.
At its heart, this is not simply a story about HIV/AIDS. It is a story about people who stood up when silence was easier. About a city forced to confront itself. About activists who fought not only for their own lives, but for the humanity of others.
Raw, intimate, heartbreaking, and ultimately hopeful, Small Town Rage preserves a chapter of Southern LGBTQ+ and HIV/AIDS history that might otherwise have been forgotten.
