Cleve Jones, founder of The NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt, was born in West Lafayette, Indiana in 1954.

Cleve's career as an activist began in San Francisco during the turbulent 1970s, when he was befriended by pioneer gay rights leader Harvey Milk. Following Milk's election to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, Cleve worked as a student intern in Milk's office while studying political science at San Francisco State University. Harvey Milk and San Francisco Mayor George Moscone were assassinated on November 27, 1978, and Cleve dropped out of school to work in Sacramento as a legislative consultant to California State Assembly Speakers Leo T. McCarthy and Willie L. Brown, Jr.

In 1982, Cleve returned to San Francisco to work in the district office of State Assemblyman Art Agnos. He was elected to three terms on the San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee and served on local and state commissions for juvenile justice and delinquency prevention and the Mission Mental Health Community Advisory Board. One of the first to recognize the threat of AIDS, Cleve co-founded the San Francisco AIDS Foundation in 1983.