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[Last name, First name], Oral history interview conducted by [Interviewer’s First name Last name], [Month DD, YYYY], [Title of Collection], [Call #]; Brooklyn Historical Society.

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Adolph Morciglio

Oral history interview conducted by Robert Rosenberg

June 01, 1992

Call number: 1993.001.08

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0:02 - Learning he was living with HIV

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3:39 - Background, drug use, how AIDS impacted home life, and getting tested

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16:13 - Life around diagnosis: Rikers Island, homelessness, relationship with mother

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20:34 - Living at Hotel St. George, accessing services through DAS, Cumberland Medical Center

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28:35 - Personal life and interpersonal relationships regarding the virus

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36:12 - Influence of Red Hook, Brooklyn; need for more support in society from Church & President

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43:17 - HIV prevention messages and stigma

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51:06 - Pride in Puerto Rican heritage, love of baseball, other passions

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Interview Description

Oral History Interview with Adolph Morciglio

Adolph Morciglio was a person with AIDS (PWA) and a former intravenous drug user (IVDU). Part Puerto Rican, he grew up on Columbia Street in Brooklyn's Red Hook neighborhood and used to live in the Brooklyn Heights neighborhood at the St. George Hotel in a special program for homeless PWAs. Prior to the interview, he'd had no major opportunistic infections though he had a dangerously low T­cell count. He was formerly working as a paralegal and had served time in prison.

Adolph Morciglio speaks about his long relationship with drugs; both as a person who used drugs for thirty years and as someone who no longer uses drugs, as well the role that drugs played in his time at Rikers Island. He speaks about his early childhood and the impact he feels it had on his life chances, his early awareness of HIV, the impact HIV has had on his life and his family, as well as the Red Hook community he is from. Towards the end of the interview, he speaks about the need for greater action by the government and churches. Interview conducted by Robert Rosenberg.

The AIDS/Brooklyn Oral History Project collection includes oral histories conducted for an exhibition undertaken by the Brooklyn Historical Society in 1993. The project attempted to document the impact of the AIDS epidemic on Brooklyn communities. Recordings initially made on magnetic tape concerned the epidemic and were with narrators who had firsthand experience with the crisis in their communities, families and personal life. Narrators came from diverse backgrounds within Brookyn and the New York metropolitan area and had unique experiences which connected them with HIV/AIDS. Substantive topics of hemophilia, sexual behavior, substance abuse, medical practice, social work, homelessness, activism, childhood, relationships and parenting run through at least one, and often several, of the oral histories in the collection.

Citation

Morciglio, Adolph, Oral history interview conducted by Robert Rosenberg, June 01, 1992, AIDS/Brooklyn Oral History Project collection, 1993.001.08; Brooklyn Historical Society.

People

  • Brooklyn­Cumberland Medical Center
  • Gay Men's Health Crisis, Inc.
  • Hotel St. George (Brooklyn, New York, N.Y.)
  • Morciglio, Adolph
  • New York (N.Y.). Department of Social Services

Topics

  • AIDS (Disease)
  • AZT (Drug)
  • Drug addiction
  • Emigration & immigration
  • Methadone maintenance
  • Patients
  • Politics and culture
  • Prisons
  • Social justice

Places

  • Brooklyn (New York, N.Y.)
  • New York (N.Y.)
  • Red Hook (New York, N.Y.)

Finding Aid

AIDS/Brooklyn Oral History Project collection