Witness History
Witness History
The AIDS Memorial Quilt
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March 27, 2020
10 minutes
Available for over a year
In 1985 activists hand-stitched a giant quilt to commemorate friends and relatives killed by AIDS, and to campaign for more funding and research into the disease. It was the brain child of Cleve Jones, who explains to Rebecca Kesby what it was like to live through the HIV/AIDS epidemic in San Francisco. How the LGBT community had to pull together, as victims of AIDS were ostracised by the wider community during their worst moment of suffering.
(Photo: A section of the AIDS Memorial Quilt. Getty Images)