"It started out of anger, and it started out of activism. Nobody should have to die like our friends did."
The AIDS Memorial Quilt is getting its homecoming.
After more than two decades on the East Coast — first in Washington, D.C., and then Atlanta, Georgia — the quilt will finally make its first public appearance since returning back home to the Bay Area. The massive quilt will be displayed outdoors June 10 and 11 at Robin Williams Meadow in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park.
John Cunningham, CEO of the National AIDS Memorial, made the announcement Tuesday morning at the San Leandro warehouse where the 54-ton, 50,000-panel project is stored, saying, “This will be a beautiful celebration of life and a recognition of the power of the quilt today as a teaching tool for health and social justice.”
It was 35 years ago that Gert McMullin, a Macy’s cosmetic counter employee, stitched the first panels of the quilt. She did it not only to remember two friends she had lost to AIDS in the early days of the epidemic, but also out of anger over the pervasive fear and stigma at the time that prevented funerals or memorials of people who died of complications from AIDS from happening.
Even though this is a memorial, “it didn’t start out that way,” she said during the announcement, “It started out of anger, and it started out of activism. Nobody should have to die like our friends did. And that’s why I’m still here today.”
Cleve Jones, an HIV/AIDS activist who first proposed the idea of the AIDS quilt, drew parallels between HIV/AIDS and the current COVID-19 tragedy.
“The diseases are very different, of course, but who knew then we would see the same terrible mistakes? And among them, perhaps the most appalling is the racial disparity. Apparently we didn’t learn that much from HIV/AIDS,” he said.
Just as communities of color have been hit hardest by COVID, the latest Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data show that as new HIV infections in the U.S. fell about 8% from 2015 to 2019, African American and Hispanics/Latinos accounted for the largest increases in new diagnoses, 42% and 27% respectively.
Though the Golden Gate Park display will feature only a portion of the entire quilt, it will still be the largest showing of the AIDS Memorial Quilt in San Francisco history, enough to fill the equivalent of 11 football fields.
