The HIV/AIDS epidemic has taken extraordinary people from us, but it has given us something else that deserves equal attention: leaders who refused to accept that infection, stigma, racism, homophobia, or institutional neglect should determine whose life had value.

Bishop Kwabena “Rainey” Cheeks was one of those leaders.

Cheeks, founder of Us Helping Us, People Into Living, Inc., died at 74 after spending decades at the intersection of HIV advocacy, Black LGBTQ+ life, spirituality, and community health. He had lived openly with HIV since 1985. His legacy deserves recognition far beyond Washington, D.C., since much of what he practiced decades ago is now recognized as central to effective public health: care rooted in the culture, experiences, relationships, and actual needs of the people being served.

Cheeks understood something during the AIDS crisis that institutions were painfully slow to grasp. You cannot effectively address HIV without addressing the person living with it.

In 1985, Cheeks and a small group of volunteers created Us Helping Us. It began in his living room, rooted in peer support and a conviction that Black gay, bisexual, and transgender people living with HIV deserved more than fear, isolation, and instructions about dying.

They deserved help living.

That distinction was enormous during an era when an HIV diagnosis could carry devastating medical and social consequences. Us Helping Us incorporated meditation, nutrition, peer support, wellness education, and other holistic practices into its early work. Its participants adopted a declaration that captured the philosophy perfectly:

“I have it. It does not have me!”

Those words challenged the idea that HIV should become a person’s entire identity.

Cheeks knew the destructive force of stigma firsthand. Mainstream AIDS organizations did not always reach Black communities effectively, and LGBTQ+ people could face rejection from religious institutions that should have offered compassion. Racism, homophobia, HIV stigma, poverty, and unequal access to health care could compound one another.

Cheeks responded by building institutions.

Us Helping Us became a nonprofit in 1988 and grew into a major community organization addressing HIV prevention, PrEP education, mental health, substance use, housing, research participation, and broader health disparities. Programs reached Black gay youth, transgender women, and people who might otherwise remain outside traditional health systems.

His faith leadership was equally striking.

Ordained in 1982, Cheeks later founded Inner Light Ministries. His ministry rejected the proposition that LGBTQ+ people had to choose between spiritual life and authenticity. He preached what he described as the “radical inclusiveness of Jesus Christ,” pairing worship with HIV education and testing.

That combination carried tremendous significance. Religion had sometimes been used as a weapon against LGBTQ+ people and people living with HIV. Cheeks reclaimed faith as a source of affirmation.

His message to people was simple:

“I see the God in you.”

There is something profoundly human in that statement, particularly when directed at communities repeatedly told that they were sinful, diseased, disposable, or somehow less worthy of dignity.

Cheeks leaves behind organizations, programs, students, colleagues, congregants, and countless people whose lives intersected with his work. Yet his larger legacy may be the principle beneath all of it.

People experiencing stigma do not need institutions to rescue them. They need institutions willing to respect them, listen to them, invest in them, and recognize their humanity.

Bishop Rainey Cheeks spent decades building exactly that kind of community.

For those of us who remember what HIV/AIDS stigma looked like at its ugliest, his death is another reminder that the history of this epidemic cannot be reduced to statistics, medications, government programs, or famous names.

It is equally the history of people who opened their living rooms, churches, clubs, clinics, and hearts when established institutions failed.

Rainey Cheeks opened his living room.

Thousands of lives eventually walked through that door.