Tiana Minter, Oral History, Visual AIDS Day With(Out) Art 2023, December 1, 2023.

Okay, this is Dan Kerr and we are at David Betheul Jamieson Studio House at Walbridge on December 1st in 2023. Could you tell us your name?

Tiana Minter, but you can call me Tee.

And could you tell us what brings you here tonight?

What brings me here is the wonderful Peter Stebbins. He invited me here because back in August, an article that I wrote was published in the Blade. And he thought that the article that I published kind of fit into the event that's going on tonight. So he invited me here and so here I am.

Could you tell us about that article?

So the article is called "Unraveling the Mystery of the Kilbourne Stones." So what had happened was August of 2022, my best friend Courtney and I, we were like taking a walk up Kilbourne Place. I lived in Mount Pleasant for like three years and she was walking quite ahead of me and I noticed like she was stopped like in front of somebody's house just looking And I come up behind her and I see headstones. So we're trading off theories because we're like, okay, it's Washington DC whose being buried curbside in the middle of an urban city. So I just snapped a picture of it, went to the house, didn't think nothing of it until like a couple hours later. And then like I posted, a post on the Washington DC subreddit asking like, did anybody in DC know about this? Nobody knew a thing. So it just started this, like my white whale of like trying to figure out like how did this come to be? Because when I tell you these are headstones, these are literally heavy granite headstones that somebody paid for and had the names of Jacob, Robert and Charles and their dates of birth and year of death etched into them.

And what did you find out?

So I didn't find out who did it. Like that is the thing is like I never found my white whale. Unfortunately, the article has been out for months. Nobody has came forward to say that they were the one who did this or if it was like a group of people. But I did find out about the lives of the three men and I think that is the most important story because in the history of the AIDS epidemic we kind of get lost in people like Rock Hudson or Liberace or the Eazy E's and the more famous people who died. But when you think about the AIDS epidemic, it took so many people and it took so many people like Robert, Charles, and Jake who weren't famous by any means. Their deaths were just a small footnote in the obituary of whatever newspaper they were chose to be honored in. But they lived really dynamic lives and they were loved by so many. And I think that's the story that also needs to be told.

And could you tell us their story?

Okay, so first off, let's start with Jacob or Jake. One thing I can tell you about Jacob and just to preface is like as I was researching these men, it felt like I come to know them and they become like my buddies. And like, sometimes when I would get like stuck research or something. I'm like, darn it, Jake, just show me something or darn it, Charles, show me something. And so just to preface that. So Jake was interesting. So Jake was actually born in Denmark. He came to America when he was about 13 years old. I think he went to Middle Township, New Jersey, and from there he went to college and then he went in the Peace Corps for several years where he worked as, he worked at tuberculosis control in South Korea. He was so passionate about what he did that when he came back to America, he became a tuberculosis case worker for PG County, Maryland. And one of his friends, Neil Landreville, who I had the pleasure of speaking with, he mentioned that up until two weeks before Jake died, Jake continued to work in tuberculosis case management. And I felt that was very commendable of Jake. Robert, Robert's from Missouri. His mom said that he just loved to stay in his room and look at maps. He loved to travel. She thinks that passion started when he worked for a AAA company and he had maps all around him. But he went to college. He graduated from University of Missouri. Once he was done with that, whatever money he had saved, he traveled all throughout Europe till the money ran dry. He came back to America and what brought him to DC was because he became a tariff specialist for the World Bank. And the interesting thing about him was that one of his best friends that his mom remembers, remember, he liked to look at maps. One of his best friends in DC was a cartographer. And Charles, not much is known about him. I've reached out to family. I've reached out to friends. I've reached out to a surviving partner. But what I do know is that he's from Saratoga Springs, New York. He came down to the area to go to John Hopkins where he studied pharmacy. From there, he goes to Howard University where he studies pharmacy. And then he works for the George Washington University Hospital Pharmacy. Then he goes to Fidia Pharmaceuticals up until he retired on disability. Excuse me. And Charles, he liked piano. He had a Dalmatian named Max. And that's what's known about Charles. But even though there wasn't much info known on him, as a black queer person and Charles being black and queer, I felt like that story also needed to be told about the experiences of what that might have been like. And he's just as important, even though there's no, not much information, but his story is just as important to be told. Yeah.

And do you think you'll continue with this story, just kind of seeing how it devolves, develops and evolves?

Yeah. If somebody comes out and says, Hey, I did it. I would be more than willing to sit down with an interview for you, talk with you. Like I, I want to meet you. Whoever did it. This is a call to you, you like R. Kelly. Is this my camera? I'm talking to you. Like, if you did those stones, please tell me. I would really love to sit down and talk to you and Mount Pleasant would really love to hear it. So, cause when I started doing the story, everybody in the neighborhood was just so excited to know. So this is not just my story, this is Mount Pleasant's story.

Excellent. Anything that you'd like to leave us with today?

So I'm currently working on, so I'm on the board of directors for a non-profit out in California that's run for my family. And one of the things is, the central focus in my work has always been black and queer stories. Sometimes one or the other, sometimes both. And with both stories, racism and homophobia is undercurrent and racism leaves such an ugly scar in this country that those people of color who died, they're not even being honored in death. And that's the situation behind the nonprofit. There's a cemetery where my grandmother's interred called Lincoln Memorial Park Cemetery and for decades its been mismanaged, its been abused, its been embezzled upon and right now we are working to preserve that legacy and I'm doing the historical part and trying to release an article and information, a book, whatever it is, so we can make a case to get on the national historic registry because so many wonderful black Los Angelinos or whatever they're called are interred there and their legacy needs to be honored. So that's what I'm currently doing. So this is a call to action. If anybody's willing to help, I'm right here. And it's called the Marjorie L. Woods Foundation.

Thank you so much.

You're welcome.

Appreciate it.

Thank you.