Keep Singing: Two Mothers, Two Sons, and Their Fight Against Jesse Helms

Keep Singing: Two Mothers, Two Sons, and Their Fight Against Jesse Helms by Vaughn, Eloise. paperback edition. ISBN: 9781555835729.

On June 5, 1994, Patsy Clarke sat down and wrote a long letter to her friend Jesse Helms. In it she recounted the last night of her son Marks life. "I sat by his bed, held his dear hand, and sang through that long last night the baby song that I had sung to all of our children. Rock-a-bye and dont you cry, rock-a-bye, little Mark. Ill buy you a pretty gold horse to ride all around your pasture" She had hoped to touch the heart of the notoriously homophobic senator, to ask him to soften his antigay stance, and to end his opposition to AIDS research funding. She failed. His callous and self-serving reply, in which he said, "I wish Mark had not played Russian roulette in his sexual activity," first broke Patsys heart-and then it made her furious. Together with her friend Eloise Clark who had also lost a son-also named Mark-to AIDS, they formed Mothers Against Jesse in Congress (MAJIC) to drive him from office. Keep Singing is the inspiring true story of two women who became the unlikeliest of activists and gave a new face to the fight against bigotry and hatred. Their journey would carry them from their quiet North Carolina homes to the stage of the 1998 Democratic Convention in Chicago. Their battle would put their names and faces in the pages of People magazine and The New York Times. Their lives would be changed forever, driven now by the desire that even in death their children would be given the simple human respect that is due everyone.