Autism in African American Community

Six years ago Camille Proctor got a surprise. She was pregnant with her second child. At the time, her oldest was almost 20 and the rigors of mothering an infant were pleasant but distant memories. Still, she gave birth to a baby boy nine months later, and a little more than a year after that, Proctor noticed something else surprising about her son. She said she saw, “little nuisances that kind of told me that something may not be right.”
Proctor’s suspicions were confirmed when a developmental pediatrician diagnosed her son, Ari Joseph, as autistic. Proctor immediately went to work. She had worked successfully as a marketing professional in Michigan and then in Atlanta, GA., where she currently lives, but found a new calling as an autism advocate.