Sylvester James, Block 5888

A quilt is displayed with 8 panels. The top half of the quilt displays two horizontal panels stacked atop each other in the center of the quilt, with one vertical panel on each side. The bottom half of the quilt is arranged in the same manner. One of the center panels reads “African American Entertainers”, and the surrounding panels disp;ay various photos, CDs/records, and a tennis racket.

Sylvester James (1947-1988) was in some ways an unlikely star: an androgynous, cross-dressing, openly gay, African American, falsetto-singing, unapologetically flaming man-diva influenced primarily by church women, black blues singers, drag queens, hippies, and homosexuals. In the 1970s and 80s, Sylvester rode his marginality right into the mainstream--a star not despite the boundaries of race, gender, and sexuality he crossed but because of them--becoming an international disco sensation and an enduring icon of queer self-determination.

Sylvester rode to stardom on the wave of liberation movements that shared with him a taste for the strange, the over-the-top, the fantastical, and that aimed, like him, for pleasure, self- determination, shamelessness, and the ecstasy of blurred boundaries. He embodied a simple set of diva-driven inspirational imperatives that have continued to inspire: be free; be fabulous; be real. The San Francisco-based singer’s “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)” became the soundtrack of sexual and gender liberation movements largely because it articulated a revolution you could dance to.