Sheryl Lee Ralph is a national treasure. I love her on Abbott Elementary and love her vibe during interviews and award shows. Sheryl’s been around Hollywood for a long time and she’s worked a lot in film, TV, and theatre over the years. She’s a positive force on- and offset. On set, she has a “no negative body talk” rule. Offset, she founded The D.I.V.A. [Divinely Inspired Victoriously Aware] Foundation in 1990, a nonprofit that raises awareness and funds for programs that promote the prevention of HIV/AIDS and other life-threatening health conditions.
Sheryl was recently awarded the inaugural Sheryl Lee Ralph Legacy Award during Project Angel Food’s 2023 awards gala. She’s been involved with Project Angel Food, a nonprofit that delivers food to LA residents with serious illnesses, since the 1980s. It was originally founded to help people impacted by the HIV/AIDS crisis. During her acceptance speech, Sheryl spoke about her decades-long activism with HIV/AIDS advocacy and Project Angel Food. She also brought up how she was warned that supporting the gay community and those struggling with HIV/AIDS would hurt her career.
On watching her friends suffer: “They were good people. They were kind people. Creative people,” she said. “You would sing and dance with them one night, then they would be fighting for their life, the next. And I said, ‘What am I watching here, God?’ and ‘Why am I having to see this in America?’”
The 80s and ‘90s were an “ugly time”: Ralph called the ’80s and ’90s an “ugly time in America” when gay men were regularly abandoned by their families, attacked by strangers and maligned by public figures. “People took comfort in pointing at those who suffered, and were dying, and saying that’s what they get, and that’s what they deserve,” she remembered, noting how even doctors and nurses discriminated against AIDS patients during their final days.
She needed to do something: “I don’t know what in the world made me open up my mouth and say, ‘Why are we not doing something?’”
On the backlash she received for being a decent, caring person: Ralph said she also faced hostility for her HIV/AIDS advocacy, telling gala attendees that some people told her to “shut up” and warned that “you won’t have much of a career because nobody’s going to like you hanging with those people.” She recalled that one church even sent her a letter urging her to stop. She refused to let the critics weaken her commitment to the cause, however.
A true legend: While accepting her award, Ralph said she “never, ever dreamed that someone would be naming an award after me and then put the word ‘legacy’ behind it.”
Sheryl is such a good person. It’s so important when celebrities and advocates with big platforms put in the work to reduce sigmas and raise awareness for the most vulnerable groups in our society. It’s wonderful to see her being recognized for all of her advocacy work throughout the years. I find it so inspiring that she knew she needed to do something and just took action, regardless of whatever consequences there were during the time period. It kind of reminds me of the same energy that Princess Diana had when she challenged stigmas by embracing AIDS patients in 1987. The world definitely needs more people like Sheryl Lee Ralph.
If you’re interested, The D.I.V.A. Foundation has an annual fundraiser called Divas Simply Singing, which raises funds for the foundation. Their next concert is being filmed live in Los Angeles on November 18 and will air on ABC and Hulu sometime during the holiday season.
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I was in SF when Diana died and the outpouring of grief for a woman who show compassion for AIDs patients was heartbreaking and so telling. Yes the 80s & 90s were a brutal time. Rice-a-Roni stopped being “the San Francisco Treat” because of AIDs. I’m glad to know this about Sheryl Lee Ralph. We’re in dark regressive times again and we need to uplift all who speak out.
I volunteered for an org that provided housing and hospice care for people living with AIDS. The house I worked in was specifically for woman, mostly sex workers.
This was late 90s early 2000s. Not one woman there had family visit. My own family was worried I was going to get AIDS and die because I was making these women grilled cheese sandwiches.
All of this to say, it was BAD for people with HIV/AIDS. God bless women like Sheryl for the light they bring into the world.
I’m late to the Abbott Elementary party but I love it.
Sheryl Lee Ralph is a true humanitarian.
Love her for this. It was not an easy cause to champion in the 80s or 90s and it did sever friendships, cause backlash at work etc. I remember one time going for a job interview with a non profit whose politics I was not sure of…and backing my car into the parking spot so they would not see my “ fight AIDS not people with AIDS “ bumper sticker when they looked out their windows…
I admire her so much for putting the needs of her friends and her community at the top of her priority list, and for ignoring people who tried to deter her from doing the right thing. She is a force and a tremendously good person, and she deserves all of the accolades.
My mom is bisexual and from NYC. She ran in a lot of the gay/queer circles downtown, even after I was born in 1991. So many of her friends passed during the 80s/90s due to AIDs related illnesses, she speaks so highly of them and it’s a shame I never got to meet them, that they didn’t get the chance to live out their lives the way they deserved to. We also lost family members to AIDs – some from receiving HIV+ blood during medical procedures, a few others were sex workers. Her friend circle is tiny now, I think in large part due to this. Sometimes I’m not sure if she’s processed the trauma of those times or if she’s grown to accept it. She tells these vivid, detailed stories that are so painful with such calm, very rarely does she cry about it. I think my generation (born in the early 90s) is so largely ignorant to this. We cannot even imagine – when my mom shares stories about her friends falling ill and dying in the hospital, I can’t believe it. I don’t think I would if there wasn’t footage or people who lived through it to share their stories.
The one time she did get upset when telling me a story was of a coworker named Angela. Angela’s boyfriend was in the closet and contracted HIV, he then passed it onto Angela. My mom told me she’s never forgotten how different Angela looked when she went to visit her in the hospital. Angela passed within a few months of being diagnosed. My mom also told me of a family friend who was HIV+ asked to hold me shortly after I was born and my mother politely declined. Even my mom, who was visiting people in hospital, checking on them, taking them food and comfort held her own biases at that time. She told me she regrets not letting him hold me, he passed away within a couple of months of my birth. All that said, I so deeply admire people like Sheryl, who follow their hearts and humanity to comfort and support the suffering/vulnerable communities when the public couldn’t (and would judge them for it). It’s such a good example and I wish we had more people who were like her, genuinely, instead of chasing clout the way we see these days.
💔
I’ve worked with HIV+/AIDS patients on the African continent – ordinary people just trying to live, who can never access the drugs (or the conditions needed to store them) and have a 2-3yr life expectancy from diagnosis to death. It’s the most gruelling job I’ve ever loved. The stigma against all those beautiful HIV+/AIDS patients during the 80s/90s is heartbreaking, and the combination of the uncaring Reagan administration in the US, Margaret Thatcher in the UK and the so-called risk groups – homosexuals, haemophiliacs and Haitians – was absolutely devastating. So many amazing people died before their time. So many continue to do so in the Global South. I admire this brave woman wholeheartedly for doing what any decent and rational human being should do: supporting their fellow men and women. A person is not their disease.
The Global Fund for AIDS and TB has made a world of difference in the Global South. It has made Antiretroviral Therapy available and dramatically reduced HIV transmission and deaths.
❤️