Glade was rebuilt, and a large dike was erected to protect towns around the lake from storm-driven overflows. World War II German prisoners of war were confined in camps located at Belle Glade and nearby Clewiston during World War II. HIV/AIDS In the early 1980s, researchers began to notice a large number of people with AIDS in Belle Glade. The disease had first been identified by doctors in New York and California in 1981, and it was largely associated with communities of gay men in and around large cities. In Belle Glade, however, people with AIDS mainly identified as heterosexual, and around half were women. Some researchers, and notably Dr. Mark Whiteside and Dr. Carolyn MacLeod of the Institute of Tropical Medicine, in Miami, hypothesized that AIDS in Belle Glade might be connected to poverty and poor living conditions in the city's "colored town," where many people diagnosed with the disease also lived. Their theory, along with the very high per capita AIDS rate in Belle Glade, brought notoriety to the town as the "AIDS capital of the world." Whiteside and MacLeod's theory turned out to be incorrect, but subsequent research conducted in Belle Glade shaped scientific knowledge about the transmission of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, through heterosexual sex. In recent years Today, the area around Lake Okeechobee is fertile and farming is an important industry. Sugar cane and vegetables are grown there. Migrant farmworkers are an important part of the labor force. Belle Glade received national attention when a 1960 CBS television documentary, Harvest of Shame, graphically depicted the local migrant farmerworkers' daily existence and working conditions. Men and women still gather around 5 a.m. in the same lot you see at the beginning of Harvest of Shame, waiting for buses to take them to the fields. The "loading ramp," as it's called, is a bleak, empty lot, surrounded by some small buildings with bars on the windows and a boarded up storefront. As of May 2014 the city has plans "to demolish the loading ramp and turn it into a park." The town is known for its football tradition, and together with nearby Pahokee has "sent at least 60 players to the National Football League". Geography According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , of which are land and 0.21% is water. Climate Demographics 2020 census As of the