Cleve Jones, gay rights activist and founder of the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt, will come to campus Nov. 30 to speak about AIDS awareness in honor of World Aids Day. Jones was portrayed by Emile Hirsch in the award-winning film “Milk.”
At the lecture, Keeping the Promise with Cleve Jones, Jones will discuss AIDS awareness, how he founded the AIDS Memorial Quilt and what it was like to work with Harvey Milk in San Francisco. The lecture is sponsored by the Ohio Union Activities Board.
“We hope that Cleve will bring an inspirational, memorable and educational story to Ohio State,” lecture chair of OUAB Stephen Humphries said. “At such a large and influential university, we hope that his speech will spark a dialogue here on campus about AIDS Awareness and LGBT issues.”
Jones became involved in gay rights while working in Milk’s office as a student intern in the 1970s, where he remained until 1978 when Milk was assassinated. In 1983, while the world was still attempting to understand the threat of AIDS, Jones co-founded the San Francisco AIDS Foundation.
In 1985, during a memorial service for Milk, Jones came up with the idea to start the AIDS Memorial Quilt. That year, he asked people who were coming to the memorial to make signs with the names of anyone they knew who had died from AIDS. At the end of the service, Jones and the participants taped the signs onto the wall of the San Francisco Federal Building. Jones thought the wall of signs resembled a patchwork quilt, and a little over a year later he started the AIDS Memorial Quilt.
Weighing in at more than 54 tons and taking up more than 1.2 million square feet, the quilt has become the world’s largest community art project. The quilt is comprised of panels, each one representing someone who has died from AIDS. Anyone can make a panel for someone they know or who they were connected to who passed away from AIDS. Jones made the first panel of the quilt in honor of Marvin Feldman, a good friend of his that lost his life to AIDS in 1986.
In the early 1990s, Jones himself was diagnosed with AIDS. He began treatment and HIV combination therapy in 1994, and at 55 years old, he is one of the longest surviving people with AIDS.
In 2008, “Milk” was released. The movie, which earned eight Academy Award nominations, is based on Harvey Milk’s life in politics up to his assassination. Jones worked closely with the film as the movie’s historical consultant.
Throughout his life, Jones has traveled around the world, giving lectures on human rights and AIDS awareness. He has met with such notable people as Nelson Mandela, George Bush and Bill Clinton. He has served as a member of the International Advisory Board of the Harvard AIDS Institute, the National Board of Governors of Project Inform, and the Board of Directors of the Foundation for AIDS and Immune Research.
The lecture is Nov. 30 at 7 p.m. in Independence Hall, room 100. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. and students need a valid Buck ID to enter.
Jones could not be reached for comment.
