Visitors to City Hall in downtown Kansas City, Missouri, on July 12, 1990, would have been in for a pungent surprise.

Wafting down the normally quiet halls were the sounds of whistles, shouting— and the unmistakable smell of a skunk. Did an animal wander into the City Council chambers? No, something far more historic was happening that day.

The shouts and whistles — yes, even the smell of rotting eggs, courtesy of cotton balls doused in skunk oil — were the work of the local chapter of AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT-UP/KC), an HIV/AIDS rights group whose theatrical and confrontational protests led to condemnation across the political spectrum. Their tactics also turned it into one of the most effective advocacy groups in American history.

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