Memory and Justice: www.memoryandjustice.org

Design

Design of Aids Memorial Quilt

The inspiration for the AIDS Memorial Quilt came during a 1985 remembrance march for the former Mayor and City Supervisor of San Francisco, George Moscone and Harvey Milk respectively, both of whom had been assassinated. Cleve Jones, an activist, asked participants in the march to write the names of AIDS victims they had known on pieces of paper, and then taped them to the outside of the San Francisco Federal Building. The resemblance to a quilt inspired Jones, alongside Michael Smith, to begin the AIDS Memorial Quilt project in 1987.

“I was just overwhelmed by the need to find a way to grieve together for our loved ones who had died so horribly, and also to try to find the weapon that would break through the stupidity and the bigotry and all of the cruel indifference that even today hampers our response,” Jones told PBS. “I thought, what a perfect symbol; what a warm, comforting, middle-class, middle-American, traditional-family-values symbol to attach to this disease that’s killing homosexuals and IV drug users and Haitian immigrants, and maybe, just maybe, we could apply those traditional family values to my family.”

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AIDS Memorial Quilt

References

Interview with Cleve Jones. Frontline, PBS, May 30, 2006.
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