Sheryl Lee Ralph refused to let the haters get the best of her. While accepting a self-titled award at Project Angel Food’s 2023 Awards Gala, the Abbott Elementary star remembered being told she wouldn’t “have much of a career” if she continued to advocate for people with HIV/AIDS.

Ralph first joined Project Angel Food — which delivers free food to those too sick to shop and cook for themselves — more than three decades ago after seeing how HIV/AIDS impacted her Broadway community. At the time, the delivery service mainly focused on bringing food to people affected by the disease.

“Let me tell you about Dec. 20, 1981,” she said in her acceptance speech on Saturday night (Sept. 23), per Variety. “I made my Broadway debut in what has become the iconic musical of the ’80s — because I say so — Dream Girls. And out of all the wonderful things we did with Dream Girls, nobody ever mentioned the fact that we lost 1/3 of our original company to AIDS.”

The star recalled the vitriol aimed at gay men during the “ugly” time in America, where “people took comfort in pointing at those who suffered, and were dying.”

“People took comfort in dumping their sick children off on church stairsteps like they were bags of used clothing for a rummage sale,” she explained. “There were those who laughed as they suffered. There were gangs of men who would roam the ‘gayborhood’ and they would beat men to a bloody pulp. Just for being there. Lovely celebrities and people that we liked and laughed with on TV came out and said the most hateful, vile things you could ever hear being said about another human being.”

She continued, “And when they were about to pass on and die, and they would be in the hospital, there was no bed for them. There were doctors and nurses who refused to give care and some of them had signs on their bed that said, ‘Do not touch,’ and I don’t know what in the world made me open up my mouth and say, ‘Why are we not doing something?'”

According to Ralph, she faced criticism when she began speaking out on behalf of people living with HIV/AIDS. She said she was told to “shut up” and was warned that she “won’t have much of a career because nobody’s going to like [her] hanging with those people.”

“They were wrong,” she said. “I’ll never forget, a church took the time to write me a letter and tell me that God would find no favor in me because of talking about that AIDS thing. Horrible.”

Ralph added, “I stood on stage, I held my son — he was all of maybe two years old — and I said no matter what, God gave me a healthy child and I would love him gay or straight and someone stood up and said, ‘What kind of hypocrite are you that would stand up and say out loud that you would love a gay son?’ But something in me said we have got to use our voices to speak up about this.”