Actor Sheryl Lee Ralph says she refused to turn her back on people with HIV/AIDS, even after she was warned that supporting the community would hurt her career.

Ralph looked back on her long history of HIV and AIDS advocacy while accepting the inaugural Sheryl Lee Ralph Legacy Award during Project Angel Foods 2023 awards gala on Saturday.

During her speech, the Abbott Elementary star talked about her three decades working with Project Angel Food, a nonprofit that delivers food to Los Angeles residents with serious illnesses.

Ralph first got involved with the organization in the 80s after witnessing how the HIV/AIDS crisis impacted the Broadway community and beyond.

They were good people. They were kind people. Creative people, she said, Variety reported . You would sing and dance with them one night, then they would be fighting for their life, the next. And I said, What am I watching here, God? and Why am I having to see this in America?

Ralph called the 80s and 90s an ugly time in America when gay men were regularly abandoned by their families, attacked by strangers and maligned by public figures.