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Cleve Jones
(October 11, 1954 - living) U.S.A.

Cleve Jones

Activist

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candlelightJones was born in Indiana and moved to San Francisco in the early 1970s. He is one of the queer community's pioneers and living legends, having served on the front lines in the fight for equality for over four decades.

In the 1970s, Jones helped his friend and mentor Harvey Milk organize the surging gay population of San Francisco into a political force. In the wake of Milk's assassination, Jones led the community in the peaceful demonstrations of November 1978, through the White Night turmoil of May 21 1979.

On May 21, 1979 thousand of gay and straight protestors led by Cleve Jones, took to the streets in protest of jury convicted killer Dan White of voluntary manslaughter rather than first-degree murder of San Francisco City Supervisor Harvey Milk.

He represented San Francisco at the first National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights in October 1979.

the Quilt the Quilt

In 1983, as the AIDS epidemic took hold in San Francisco, Jones co-founded the San Francisco AIDS Foundation. In November 1985, Jones was inspired to create the NAMES Project, which was responsible for the AIDS Memorial Quilt, one of the most significant pieces of folk art in American history. The story of the Quilt made its debut on Jones's thirty-third birthday.

Jones was inspired to create the NAMES Project, which was responsible for the AIDS Memorial Quilt in November 1985. By the time of 1985 march, the number of San Franciscan who had died from Aids-related illness reached the 1,000 mark: Jones asked each of the marchers to write on a placard the names of these lost to Aids.

Cleve JonesLevine notes that "At the end of the march, Jones and others stood on the ladders, above the sea of candlelight, taping these placards to the walls of San Francisco Federal Building.

The wall of names looked to Jones like a patchwork quilt". Thus the Aids Quilt was born.

The Quilt consists of individual three-by-six-foot panels sewn together by friends, family and loved ones.

"By the fifth time the entire quilt was unfolded in public, in Washington, D.C., on October 11, 1996, it comprised 45,000 panels. But this time we unfolded it with a sense of hope - hope for effective treatments, for compassionate public policy, for a vaccine.

Also for the first time, the president and first lady of the United States were there. And as I had first imagined in 1985, it covered the National Mall, stretching from the Capitol to the Washington Monument."

Cleve Jones
Cleve Jones, NAMES Project Foundation, San Francisco, California, c. 1988. Photo c/o Showtime Films.

Jones's work factors prominently in Randy Shilts's pioneering And the Band Played On . Since the late 1980s, in addition to his work with the NAMES Project, Jones has worked as a community, political, and labor organizer with a focus on issues related to the queer community.

Jones's book, When We Rise: My Life in the Movement , served as partial inspiration for the mini-series "When We Rise," written by Dustin Lance Black.

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Source: excerpts from: Aldrich R. & Wotherspoon G., Who's Who in Contemporary Gay and Lesbian History, from WWII to Present Day, Routledge, London, 2001 - http://lgbt-history-archive.tumblr.com/ - et alii

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