See also ACT UP; AIDS Memorial Quilt; Cancer
research; Fetal medicine; Genetics research; Health
care in the United States; Homosexuality and gay
rights; Hudson, Rock; Medicine; White, Ryan.
AIDS Memorial Quilt
Identification A community art project honoring
those killed by AIDS in the United States
Date Begun in 1987 by the NAMES Project
Foundation
The AIDS Memorial Quilt was conceived by a group of San
Franciscans to honor and remember the citizens of San
Francisco who had died of AIDS since 1981. The project be-
came much larger, as people all over the countr y contributed
to, viewed, and were memorialized by the quilt.
The AIDS Memorial Quilt was conceived during the
November, 1985, candlelight vigil marking the anni-
versary of the 1978 assassinations of San Francisco
mayor George Moscone and openly gay San Fran-
cisco supervisor Harvey Milk. That year, vigil orga-
nizer Cleve Jones asked participants to write on large
placards the names of friends and partners that had
been previously claimed by the acquired immunode-
ficiency syndrome (AIDS) epidemic. More than one
thousand San Franciscans had perished from the dis-
ease since it was first identified in 1981 by American
medical scientists. Like many others, Jones was con-
cerned that these people would be forgotten because
of their homosexuality and the public fear of AIDS.
Additionally, many of those who had died of AIDS
had been abandoned by their biological families, and
the remains of some had even been refused by mortu-
aries for proper burial and memorial services.
Resembling a patchwork quilt when posted to-
gether on a wall, the memorial placards inspired a
larger project of connected, sewn, quilted panels
that was subsequently administered by the nonprofit
NAMES Project Foundation. Composed of individ-
ual blocks encompassing 144 square feet, each block42 AIDS Memorial Quilt The Eighties in America
On June 25, 1988, nearly fifteen hundred panels of the AIDS Memorial Quilt are assembled in New York’s Central Park.(AP/Wide
World Photos)