The Quilt was conceived in November of 1985 by long-time San Francisco gay rights activist Cleve Jones. Since the 1978 assassinations of gay San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone, Jones had helped organize the annual candlelight march honoring these men. While planning the 1985 march, he learned that over 1,000 San Franciscans had been lost to AIDS. He asked each of his fellow marchers to write on placards the names of friends and loved ones who had died of AIDS. At the end of the march, Jones and others stood on ladders taping these placards to the walls of the San Francisco Federal Building. The wall of names looked like a patchwork quilt.
Inspired by this sight, Jones and friends made plans for a larger memorial. A little over a year later, a small group of strangers gathered in a San Francisco storefront to document the lives they feared history would neglect. Their goal was to create a memorial for those who had died of AIDS, and to thereby help people understand the devastating impact of the disease. This meeting of devoted friends and lovers served as the foundation of the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt.
Cleve created the first panel for the AIDS Memorial Quilt in memory of his friend Marvin Feldman. In June of 1987, Jones teamed up with Mike Smith, Gert McMullin and several others to formally organize the NAMES Project Foundation.
Public response to the Quilt was immediate. People in the U.S. cities most affected by AIDS — Atlanta, New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco — sent panels to the San Francisco workshop. Generous donors rapidly supplied sewing machines, equipment and other materials, and many volunteered tirelessly.
Read more at the National AIDS Memorial.
Don’t miss the opportunity to see five panels from the national AIDS Memorial Quilt on display in the Livingston Lord Library from October 1 through Dec. 1. Panels in each of the quilts were created to honor individuals from the Fargo/Moorhead area.
The quilt was conceived in November of 1985 by long-time San Francisco gay rights activist Cleve Jones when he learned about the thousands of individuals who had been lost to AIDS. Weighing an estimated 54 tons and made up of over 50,000 panels, the AIDS Memorial Quilt is the largest piece of community folk art in the world. Read more about the history of the AIDS Quilt at the National AIDS Memorial website.
Forty-eight 3' x 6' panels of the AIDS Memorial Quilt were put on display in the Comstock Memorial Union Ball Room in 1992. The quilts were displayed from November 29th to December 1st and were accompanied by workshops and video presentations. The university worked for two years to get the display.
Some panels of the quilt were also put on display in the Comstock Memorial Union Ballroom in 2002.