Malcolm X, née Little, delivered this speech twice in 1964, first in Cleveland and then again days later in Detroit. One month earlier, he had left the Nation of Islam, which discouraged its members from working alongside civil-rights activists. America was being governed by Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson, who took office following the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy and was running for office touting the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which, along with the Voting Rights Act of 1965, would eventually give Black people unburdened access to the vote after a brutal, decades-long fight. Black Americans faced widespread political disenfranchisement and outright violence in their demand for voting rights. Just six months before Malcolm delivered his speech, four little Black girls were bombed to death in the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham.

Black activists believed that the segregationist governor of Alabama, George Wallace, deserved some blame for the little girls’ deaths, as just one week before the bombing he told a New York Times reporter that the country needed “a few first-class funerals” suggesting that was the solution to stopping integration. At the time of Malcolm’s speech, George Wallace was running against Lyndon Johnson in the Democratic primary.

Malcolm’s speech conveyed the pain and rage the Black community was feeling, pairing it with an urgent warning that escalated the community's demand for enfranchisement. It wasn't just a request for justice; it was a call for revolution. “This is why I say it's the ballot or the bullet. It's liberty or it's death. It's freedom for everybody or freedom for nobody…. A revolution is bloody, but America is in a unique position. She's the only country in history in the position actually to become involved in a bloodless revolution…. All she's got to do is give the Black man in this country everything that's due him. Everything.”

In his speech, Malcolm continually stressed the importance of the 1964 election as the future of the Civil Rights Act hung in the balance between President Johnson, who eventually won the Democratic nomination, and Barry Goldwater, the Republican presidential candidate who opposed the legislation. For Black folks, the 2020 election is just as critical of a year as 1964 was, as preventing the reelection of Donald Trump and his continued dismantling of facets of that very same Civil Rights Act takes center stage.

The possibility of a pandemic is a challenge Donald Trump is unqualified to handle as president. I remember how Trump sought to stoke fear and stigma during the 2014 Ebola epidemic. He called President Barack Obama a “dope” and “incompetent” and railed against the evidence-based response our administration put in place — which quelled the crisis and saved hundreds of thousands of lives — in favor of reactionary travel bans that would only have made things worse. He advocated abandoning exposed and infected American citizens rather than bringing them home for treatment.

Trump’s demonstrated failures of judgment and his repeated rejection of science make him the worst possible person to lead our country through a global health challenge.

The outbreak of a new coronavirus, which has already infected more than 2,700 people and killed over 80 in China, will get worse before it gets better. Cases have been confirmed in a dozen countries, with at least five in the United States. There will likely be more.

Though scientists have been able to create vaccines for other viruses, developing a vaccine for HIV has been especially challenging. (In lieu of one, doctors mostly use preventative drugs like Truvada to help prevent contraction of the virus in uninfected people who are at high risk.)

But a vaccine could significantly taper infections worldwide. “Even a moderately effective vaccine would significantly decrease the burden of HIV disease over time,” said Fauci in a statement.

So why are HIV vaccines so elusive?

HIV behaves unlike most other viruses in some important ways. Usually, when a person is infected with a virus, their immune system creates antibodies that target the bug. That’s usually the starting point for researchers, who work to develop drugs that can imitate that process (but without causing the recipient to develop a full blown reaction to the virus). What’s tricky about HIV, however, is that when a person is infected with the virus, that same process of developing antibodies isn’t triggered.