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Robert Rayford becomes the first known person to die with HIV.

1969

AIDS
QT
EPD
DDD

A St. Louis teenager identified as Robert Rayford dies of an illness that baffles his doctors. Eighteen years later, molecular biologists at Tulane University in New Orleans will test samples of his remains and find evidence of HIV.

Robert Rayford, a young Black man, is not known to identify as gay or bisexual, but will be named as such by the physicians due to their cultural assumptions.