When he was diagnosed with prostate cancer late last year, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin joined the 280,000 Black men annually identified with the disease. It’s so common, studies show, that 1 in 6 Black men will develop it during their lifetime.
Last Spring, the nation was alarmed to hear of another infectious disease that was rapidly spreading. On the heels of the COVID-19 pandemic, public health officials, including the World Health Organization, declared Monkeypox, now called Mpox, a public health emergency of international concern.
A layoff, death in the family, a violent assault—in 1999, the hits just kept coming for Antoine Craigwell, then a young adult trying to make his way in New York City.
And so, one November day, he inched toward the edge of a Manhattan subway platform and prepared to take matters into his own hands: He would jump in front of the oncoming No. 1 train and end it all.He steeled his nerves—then he thought of his family, including his adopted mother, who’d buried his sister just months before. Craigwell backed off.
Despite an active childhood that included playing football and running track since fifth grade, Gerald Thomas was a bit spooked when he read his class schedule at the start of his freshman year at Elbert County Comprehensive High School in northeast Georgia.
“When I saw it said ‘weightlifting’ I went to my school counselor and asked her to change it because for some reason I was intimidated,” Thomas recalls. “She told me that for all athletes, weightlifting was our P.E.”
Thomas’s aversion to bench presses and squats soon dissipated as he became a stronger defensive end, a faster 400-meter runner, and experienced other benefits of regularly being in the gym.
“It helped me improve my performance, and it also made me look better,” says Thomas, who more than 30 years later remains an avid weightlifter, and whose 50-year-old physique resembles that of a college athlete. He briefly stopped working out after ending his collegiate track career, but within a month, Thomas noticed the activity he once dreaded had become an essential part of his being.
