Category: Giving Them Their Roses
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CAUSHUN
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“Would there ever be a place for black gay/queer/SGL in hip hop?”, a question I asked myself in my youth. I didn’t identify with Eminem and most black rappers made it very clear that I wasn’t welcomed in hip hop. Little did I know, I would end up being the…
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OAKTOWN’S 357
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oaktown’s 357 were one of hip-hop’s most exciting groups of the early 1990s. heir combination of catchy rhymes, dope fashions, and stunning choreography not only separated them from other groups like salt ‘n pepa and jj fad, who were garnering attention from top 40 radio, but 357 captivated a generation…
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LIZ TORRES
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one of the first chicago house music singers to garner national notoriety in the mid-80s, especially in gay clubs, liz torres commanded the dance floor with her collaborations with fellow chicago-house pioneers jesse jones and master c&j. by 1990, liz reached her peak when she signed with major label jive…
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MARTHA WASH
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martha wash is one of the greatest vocalists in music history. and i would wager my mariah carey cd collection (which at this moment is 250 plus of cds, cassettes, and vinyl) that you have shaken your ass to a martha wash record. in the late 1970s, marta got her…
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MARY JANE GIRLS
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the pointer sisters, sister sledge and vanity 6 were my earliest introduction to the miracle that is the girl group genre. as a young child trying to make sense of societal demands to be “rougher,” girl groups captured my imagination with their style, choreography, and essence while commanding me to…
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LADY CATIRIA
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Catiria Reyes, widely known as Lady Catiria, was a Puerto Rican trans woman born in Bayamón, Puerto Rico. Like many young queer and transgender boricuas, Lady Catiria grew up idolizing the beloved, campy but glamorous Puerto Rican entertainer Iris Chacón. Known as “La Bomba de Puerto”, Chacón’s flamboyant, revealing outfits,…
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Earvin Magic Johnson
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1991 marked a decade of what it is now regarded as the AIDS crisis. the hope that emerged after the introduction of AZT, the first FDA approved pill to treat HIV, began to diminish after the death toll exceeded 100,000 in june 1991. by the end of the year, AIDS…
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2021 Gran Varones Fellows
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For the past seven years, Gran Varones has grown from a local initiative in Philadelphia to a national and award-winning digital project amplifying queer history, culture, and community storytelling through a Black-Latinx Queer lens. In 2018, we successfully launched the inaugural Positive Digital Arts Fellowship working with gay, queer, bisexual…
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MJ RODRIGUEZ
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the category is celebration and the winner is the incomparable miss mj rodriguez. on june 3, 2018 “pose” premiered on FX. set in the 1980s and 1990s, “pose” told the story of black and brown trans and queer young people as they built community to hold themselves together while navigating…
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GEORGE MICHAEL
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to be a global pop star who was gay but not out during the height of the AIDS epidemic meant living in closets that were never to be vacated. It meant contending with being loved and adored by a world that was simultaneously waiting with baited breath to stigmatize you…
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TONY VIRAMONTES
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years before i knew who tony viramontes was, i knew of his art. sometime in 1986, three years before i began buying music on my own, my uncle took me to my first record store. as we walked into the store, i was in complete wonderment. it was the closest…
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MARCO CASTRO-BOJORQUEZ
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often times when historians speak of those who were on the front lines of AIDS advocacy, it is framed in the activism of the 1980s and 1990s. but marco castro-bojorquez was proof that the work continued throughout and beyond what is now considered the height of the AIDS crisis. marco…