Ailey lived through a lot of significant cultural events in his lifetime. He was born in the middle of the Great Depression, which must have just been peachy for his single, teenage mother. Just before adolescence struck Ailey, the Second World War started, and soon after that the United States entered the war. Ailey probably witnessed not only the racism aimed toward Blacks and African Americans at the time, but also the undue racism and internment of Japanese people across the States as well. After the war ended, it was not long until the Civil Rights Movement started, beginning with the Supreme Court's famous ruling in the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. This was the beginning of the eventual overturning Jim Crow laws and segregation as a whole in the United States. At this time (1954), Ailey was in New York, just finishing his run with the (ahead of its time in terms of integration) Lester Horton Dance Company.

By 1960, Ailey had already started his own dance company and had already choreographed many dances and had many performances, but this was the year he created Revelations, his masterpiece. This was a very hostile time in the United States. This was right in the middle of the Civil Rights Movement, when players like W.E.B. DuBois and Martin Luther King Jr. were fighting to bring equality to America not just for African Americans but for all peoples of different creeds, skin colors, and religions. This dance, centered around Ailey's experiences growing up as a black man growing up in the South not only became a hit among Blacks an African Americans, but also among other minorities and among whites. This dance was so well liked that it eventually became the most performed dance in all of dance history.

Unfortunately for Ailey, he was also part of the AIDS epidemic of the 80's. Starting in 1981, after 5 gay men were all entered in an area hospital with the same lung condition, the CDC made a report documenting the first appearance of AIDS in the United States. Many thousands died from the condition, mostly affecting gay men. Two famous men to die of AIDS related complications in the 80's were actor Rock Hudson and pianist Liberace. In 1989, a year after receiving honors from the Kennedy Center for the Arts, Ailey died of AIDS related illness.

http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/civil-rights-movementhttps://www.aids.gov/hiv-aids-basics/hiv-aids-101/aids-timeline/
http://www.advocate.com/arts-entertainment/people/2015/03/11/23-celebrities-who-lost-their-battle-aids