Mission: To create quality greeting cards which appeal to Black same gender loving, lesbian, gay, bi, trans people, family, and supporters. Lavenderpop allows this community to send and receive cards with reflect both our heritage as people of African descent and our affectional orientation. Lavenderpop seeks to continue the rich tradition of artists, writers, performers, and activists who give visibility and inspiration to this diverse community.

		Otis Richardson
			Otis Richardson recognized his God given talent for art at an early age. He has studied painting and illustration on the undergraduate and graduate levels, obtaining a Masters of Fine Arts from Northern Illinois University in 1990. His work has been featured in publications by Windy City Media, THING-Black queer zine, and nationally in Sophisticate Black Hair magazine and BLACKFIRE, a magazine of Black same gender loving male erotica. He is a contributor to Fat Gurrl Ink Greeting Cards (Fat Positive Womyn). His involvement in the Black same gender loving community includes membership in Church of the Open Door, Brothers of the Open Door, Blacks For Gay Marriage, and Adodi Chicago. Visit the Lavenderpop Blog! Original fine art, illustrations, music/book reviews and other pop culture musings. www.lavenderpopin.blogspot.com
				Special Thanks to members of the Richardson family for providing the seed for Lavenderpop. Their contribution has been a real blessing.

		Pioneer Biographies
			Langston Hughes Langston Hughes began writing in high school, and even at this early age was developing the voice that made him famous. Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri, but lived with his grandmother in Lawrence, Kansas until he was thirteen and then with his mother in Lincoln, Illinois and Cleveland, Ohio where he went to high school. During the time Hughes lived with his grandmother, however, she was old and poor and unable to give Hughes the attention he needed. Besides, Hughes felt hurt by both his mother and his father, and was unable to understand why he was not allowed to live with either of them. These feelings of rejection caused him to grow up very insecure and unsure of himself. Money was a nagging concern for Hughes throughout his life. While he managed to support himself as a writer, no small task, he was never financially secure. In 1947, however, through his work writing the lyrics for the Broadway musical "Street Scene," Hughes was finally able to earn enough money to purchase a house in Harlem, which had been his dream. He continued to write: "Montage of a Dream Deferred," one of his best known volumes of poetry, was published in 1951; and from that time until his death sixteen years later he wrote more than twenty additional works.

		Audre Lorde Audre Lorde was in her own words 'a black, lesbian, mother, warrior poet.' She was also an activist, a teacher, a 14 year cancer survivor and the author of 18 books of poetry and prose. Audre Lorde was born in 1934 in New York to parents of West Indian heritage. She passed away in 1992, a victim of breast cancer. Her battle with the disease, which was chronicled in works like The Cancer Journals, was just one of many struggles she had to deal with in life. Audre Lorde was a black homosexual female in a world dominated by white heterosexual males. She fought for justice on each of these minority fronts. Her writings protest against the swallowing of black American culture by an indifferent white population, against the perpetuation of sex discrimination, and against the neglect of the movement for gay rights. Her poetry, however, is not entirely political in content. It is extremely romantic in nature and is described by Joan Martin as ringing with, "passion, sincerity, perception, and depth of feeling." Not only was Audre Lorde a writer and an activist but she was an educator. She held numerous teaching positions and toured the world as a lecturer. She formed coalitions between Afro-German and Afro-Dutch women, founded a sisterhood in South Africa, began Women of Color Press, and established the St. Croix Women's Coalition. She was living in St.Croix at the time of her death. Perhaps the most fitting summary of her life and work can be found in a Boston Globe tribute by Renee Graham: "She took her frailties and misfortunes, her strengths and passions, and forged them into something searing, sometimes startling, always stirring verse. Her words pranced with cadence, full of their own rhythms, all punctuated resolve and spirit. With words spun into light, she could weep like Billie Holiday, chuckle like Dizzy Gillespie or bark bad like John Coltrane."

		SYLVESTER Sylvester was born Sylvester James on September 6, 1947 to an affluent black family in Los Angeles. Sylvester’s initial exposure to music came through his grandmother, Julia Morgan, who had been a revered jazz singer in the 1930's. Through her, he acquired an interest in blues and theatre. At his grandmother’s encouragement, he learned to sing at a local Pentecostal church. Exceptionally gifted and popular as a singer in his preteen years, he performed at various South Los Angeles churches, as well as statewide gospel conventions. Sylvester relocated to San Francisco, circa 1967. This was prior to the city’s famed status as the gay capital of the world. San Francisco, with its burgeoning art scene and hippie culture, proved to be the perfect creative base for Sylvester. He started singing in Chinatown at the Rickshaw Lounge. Creating a stage show called, "The Women of Blues", he performed as "Ruby Blue" and paid homage to Billie Holiday, Lena Horne and Bessie Smith. Sylvester became venerated throughout the Bay Area for his dead-on allusions to divas of the past, as well as his powerhouse voice. Blessed with a soaring gospel-trained falsetto, his throaty delivery was rivaled in disco land only by the likes of Loleatta Holloway, or one of his backup singers Martha Wash, originally with Two Tons Of Fun.  With his captivating stage presence, Sylvester performed in elaborate costumes and gowns conceived by Pat Campano (who also designed for the Supremes and the Jackson Five). One of the few openly gay artists in disco, or popular music for that matter, Sylvester was distinguishable from his contemporaries by the fact that he was a drag performer. Indeed, Sylvester was unabashedly gay and his extroverted persona bestowed upon him a multiracial, pansexual fan base. Though Sylvester was primarily associated with disco, he performed blues, gospel, jazz, Southern rock, Northern soul and show tunes. However, a thoughtful observance of disco and its history are necessary in the proper delineation of Sylvester’s legacy. Sylvester lived disco, and in his all-too-short career, came to personify its innovations, triumphs and tragedies. On December 16, 1988, Sylvester James succumbed to AIDS-related complications at the age of 41. Despite his untimely passing, Sylvester’s spirit lives on in a new generation of musicians, gay and straight. Indeed, Sylvester’s recordings have reached a wider audience since his passing. Like disco, the genre in which he was such a quintessential figure, Sylvester has found new life on today’s dance floors.

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