On September 13, the New York City AIDS Memorial will once again welcome The Generations Project to produce our seventh afternoon of live storytelling, focusing on stories related to Hart Island.

Hart Island, located off the coast of the Bronx, is home to the largest public cemetery in the United States and holds a painful chapter of the AIDS epidemic. In the 1980s and ’90s, at the height of the crisis, New Yorkers who died of AIDS-related complications were often abandoned by family or refused burial elsewhere due to stigma, and were buried in mass graves on Hart Island. For years, these graves were unmarked and inaccessible, reinforcing the erasure and shame surrounding the epidemic. In recent years, artists, activists, and family members have fought to reclaim Hart Island as a site of memory and dignity, advocating for greater public access, transparency, and acknowledgment of the thousands of marginalized people who were laid to rest there as a result of discrimination, poverty, or public neglect.