Major display of AIDS Memorial Quilt to kick off in Jackson

Kiara Fleming, Mississippi Clarion Ledger
·3 min read

Different sections of the AIDS Memorial Quilt will be coming to Jackson and surrounding communities for a week to honor lives lost to AIDS with quilt-making workshops and awareness programs.

Emmy Award-winning actress Sheryl Lee Ralph created one of the quilts and will be in Jackson on Wednesday to kick off the event. Ralph will attend an event at JSU on Thursday.

The quilt displays are part of Change the Pattern, a new initiative of the National AIDS Memorial, Southern AIDS coalition, and funded through the support of Gilead Sciences.

More than 500 hand-stitched Quilt panels will be on display honoring Black and brown lives lost to AIDS, many newly made in Mississippi and seen for the first time publicly.

“My father died of AIDS-related complications in 1986, and at the time when he passed away, he was a professor and associate dean of the business office at Howard University, so imagine the stigma and shame during that time in the '80s and how challenging it was for my sisters and myself,” said Director of Quilt Community Engagement, Duane Cramer, an African American gay male living with HIV. “We would first start telling people that my father died of cancer because we were so fearful of the stigma associated with AIDS.

“Later on, we started seeing so many people of color die from AIDS so we decided to start a panel for our father for the AIDS quilt so that he would be remembered.”

Several new quilt panels from Mississippi will be part of the exhibition, including ones honoring Jackson State University’s well-known professor Dr. Mark A. Colomb, a panel for residents who were cared for at Grace House, as well as panels for 14-year-old Hemophiliac Michael Felton, and Lavadious Walker, who was celebrated in the Trans community.

There will also be panels made by legendary civil rights and justice activist Rosa Parks, who was a supporter of the AIDS Quilt. Another section was made by Emmy Award-winning actress Ralph in 2012 and will also be displayed in the exhibit.

Ralph will serve as a celebrity ambassador for Change the Pattern initiative and will be in attendance Wednesday and in Jackson for the week of the public display of the AIDS Memorial Quilt.

The displays will share different powerful stories of love and remembrance of each panel of lives lost to the disease.

“We want to ensure that the lives of Black and brown people as well as other communities such as the transgender community are also represented so that the full picture and story of the impact of HIV/AIDS is really shown.” Cramer said. “The Mississippi Civil Rights Museum is where we will have the largest display of the quilt.”

The public will be able to see local residents making the quilts, and listen to leaders of the community discuss issues and solutions on how to end HIV/AIDS in the south.

Want to go?

  • When: Wednesday, Sep. 28 through Tuesday, Oct. 4

  • Where: Several Locations in Jackson and surrounding areas. Click Here.

  • Admission: All displays and events are free to public.

  • Time: 2 p.m.

Have a story idea? Reporter Kiara Fleming can be reached via email KDFleming@jackson.gannett.com. You can also follow her on Twitter @ki_dajournalist

This article originally appeared on Mississippi Clarion Ledger: Different sections of the AIDS Memorial Quilt will start in Jackson