Mona Bennett never thought her work to stop the spread of AIDS would earn her a place in a museum. The Louisiana native got involved in AIDS prevention and education activities in the mid-1980s, when the disease was still a mystery to most scientists. Even her trademark denim hat, covered in condoms and political buttons, has become part of the South's AIDS lore.

A trio of Georgia-based nonprofit groups recently selected Bennett as one of 10 people honored in an exhibit titled "From the Beginning: African-American Heroes and the AIDS Epidemic in Atlanta." The collection features members of Atlanta's black community who are or were AIDS activists, volunteers or health care providers.

Organizers hope the event will serve as a catalyst to create the South's first museum dedicated to the documentation and study of how AIDS has affected the world, both socially and politically. Current plans would house the museum in Atlanta, inside the very building occupied by AIDS Survival Project, Positive Impact, and AIDS Treatment Initiatives -- the three nonprofits developing the museum. Jeff Graham, director of AIDS Survival Project, said organizers estimate the museum would have a yearly budget of nearly $500,000 and would produce between three to five new exhibits each year. Fundraising for the museum will not officially start until the directors of the nonprofits are able to bring on someone to manage the project.

The accompanying audio interviews were supplied by exhibit Director Saralyn Chesnut, a professor of American and women's studies at Emory University. "You see a lot of statistics about AIDS, but these interviews are really a way of putting a face on the statistics," she said. "From the Beginning" was chosen as the sample exhibit because of the organizers' ties to Atlanta, where nearly 16,000 AIDS cases -- or 66 percent of all cases in Georgia -- have been diagnosed since 1981.

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