The Red Cross now uses the date of 1977 for the start (banning "men who have sex with men" if they have done so since 1977, from donating blood), but I ran across a newspaper story about a black teenager in St. Louis who died from it in the late 1960s. The doctors were mystified about his illness, and he was uncommunicative, so they saved a sample of his blood, and when the AIDS epidemic exploded they had it tested and found that he had had AIDS.
Wow. I hadn't heard that. Would be very interested if you can remember the source of this info.