Frankie Franklin-Foxx was one of the first women in the first support group created in Chicago in 1988 for women living with HIV and AIDS.
“She was one of the longest-lived members of that early group of women who came together and said, ‘We have to take care of the each other, speak out, support each other,” said Catherine Christeller, founder of the support group and executive director of Chicago Women’s AIDS Project.
Ms. Franklin-Foxx died Dec. 13 from a heart attack at St. Francis Hospital in Evanston. She was 68.
The group rented space in an old cobalt blue, Victorian-style home in Edgewater that was owned by a church.
“We started with one room and expanded to take over most of the building,” Christeller said. “It was old and drafty, but there was room for the women to meet and for their children to play, and there was a big kitchen for hot lunch, and we did Thanksgiving and Christmas and Mother’s Day.”
It would be years before effective treatments were developed for HIV. Those suffering from the virus often kept it a secret.
“The assumption was that somehow women were at fault for being promiscuous. But most were in fact positive from a long-term partner, usually their husband, or from needle usage. And there was fear and misinformation about how the virus spread. And there wasn’t much testing or resources devoted to women at the time,” Christeller said.
Ms. Franklin-Foxx learned she had HIV after she donated blood for a event organized by the insurance company where she worked at the time in an administrative position, her daughter Jolynn Franklin said.
“She, like many of the women, struggled with just coming to terms with the diagnosis and wondering, ‘Am I going to die soon. How long am I going to last?” recalled Christeller.
Ms. Franklin-Foxx found strength in helping others.
She took a leadership role and began recruiting other women to join the group and learn more about resources available to them.
“I think she saw herself as kind of the mother of the group. She was quite a character, and her big quality was to encourage women to come together and celebrate being alive. There was a lot of isolation. We had women who’d come to Edgewater from the South Side to be part of the group because they had no support.”
She also advocated for better policies, prevention services, treatment and testing.
“There were only a couple outspoken women like her. She attended demonstrations and rallies, including one outside the governor’s mansion,” Christeller said.
Ms. Franklin-Foxx was born at Cook County Hospital March 15, 1955, and raised on the South Side. She fled a troubled home as a teen to live on the North Side. Her birth name was Waverlynn Franklin, and she went by Waver for years before changing it to Frankin.
She held numerous jobs: switchboard operator, gas station attendant, department store clerk.
She earned an associate’s degree from Truman College in her mid-50s and studied psychology through the Truman-DePaul Adult Bridge Program, her daughter said.
She also served on the community advisory board of the Women’s Interagency HIV Study, which is funded by the National Institute of Health and is the nation’s largest and longest running HIV study of women.
“She really put her all into having people’s backs when no one else would, and she lost friend after friend after friend after friend,” her daughter said. “She was relentless when it came to, ‘This is my voice, I don’t care how you feel about it.’ And she would say what no one would say. She was an intense force.”
Ms. Franklin-Foxx, affectionately known as Fufu by family, had two phrases she often shared, recalled her grandson, Joshua Sterling Franklin.
One was: “If you don’t like it, change it.”
The other was: “When you fall down, get back up, brush yourself off, and you’ll come out smelling like a bed roses.”
In addition to her daughter, Jolynn Franklin, and her grandson, Joshua Sterling Franklin, survivors include 15 other grandchildren and 16 great grandchildren.
A private memorial has been held.
