Quilt helps share HIV/AIDS awareness, prevent deaths in the South

Jada Harris spreads out the fabric that will one day become a quilt. For now, it's just cloth with letters safety-pinned to it, showing where to sew. But soon it will be a part of the largest piece of community folk art in the world.

Activist Cleve Jones started the AIDS Memorial Quilt 35 years ago as a way to honor and remember his friends who died of AIDS. Today, the quilt is 56 miles long, weighs 54 tons and features people of every demographic.

The group set up shop at Alabama State University on the first Friday in November. The members sewed, attaching letters to the quilt as they waited for students to arrive.

Historically, the quilt has featured more white people than people in the Black and brown communities, despite that HIV/AIDS has become more prevalent among those people groups. As HIV/AIDS has torn through the South, Black and brown people have been the most impacted by the infection. That's partly because, in the past, the government was slow to quell HIV/AIDS among people of color, giving the infection a stronghold in the community.

Within the AIDS Memorial Quilt program, Call My Name is a program that strives to include more Black and brown people on the quilt.

It is an "opportunity for us to really write our own narrative,” said Duane Cramer, the director of quilt community engagement.

“We want to make sure that the people who are represented on the quilt match the numbers that we hear all the time," Harris said.

Harris said the early activists expected there to be a cure, which would save their loved ones.

“We never expected [after] 35 years, we’d still be here," Harris said.

While treatment and prevention methods exist for HIV/AIDS, there is still no cure.

Harris said it is important to talk to young people, because they are the ones getting infected. The average age of people on the quilt is 33. She aims to create a space where people can talk about HIV/AIDS.

“It’s a kitchen table environment where people are sitting around and they start telling some of the most intimate details of their lives, you know? Right here in these kinds of environments because I know it’s cliche, but we create a safe space for people," Harris said.

For Cramer, the mission is very personal. His father, Joe J. Cramer Jr., died of AIDS in September 1986.

Back then, Cramer said people did not talk about HIV/AIDS. In the South, some people still share the attitude that the infection is not polite conversation.

Part of what the organization does is try to reduce the stigma that surrounds HIV/AIDS. Cramer said it is also about celebrating the lives of the people on the quilt.

“Because if we don’t show the people, it’s almost as if they never existed. Like, they’re just a number," Harris said. "And it’s not really real to people sometimes until you show people who look like them."

Stephanie Laster also works with the AIDS Memorial Quilt. She quietly sewed together pieces of the quilt until the opportunity struck to encourage safe sex. Laster enthusiastically pulled a condom out of her fanny pack and offered it to a girl who was helping to sew a ribbon onto the quilt. She reminds people, "HIV has not gone anywhere."

By the end of this month, people will be able to go to the Kress Building and see sections of the quilt.

“Every single person can make a difference," Cramer said.

Alex Gladden is the Montgomery Advertiser's public safety reporter. She can be reached at agladden@gannett.com or 479-926-9570.

This article originally appeared on Montgomery Advertiser: AID Memorial Quilt comes to Alabama to spread awareness to the South