Sylvester

In the late 1930s, Julia and her husband took part in the Great Migration of African-Americans out of the Southern United States, relocating to Watts.

It was here that Letha was largely raised and where she met and married her first husband, Sylvester "Sweet" James, with the couple moving into a small cottage owned by Letha's parents.

Sylvester James Jr. (September 6, 1947 – December 16, 1988), known simply as Sylvester, was an American singer-songwriter.

Sylvester James was born on September 6, 1947, in the Watts district of Los Angeles, California, into a middle-class family.

His mother, Letha Weaver, had been raised near Palestine, Arkansas, into a relatively wealthy African-American family who owned their own farmland.

Letha's biological mother, Gertha Weaver, was unmarried and too sickly to care for her child, so Gertha's sister Julia, known to the family as JuJu, became Letha's adoptive mother.

Their first child, named Sylvester after his father, was followed by the birth of John Wesley in 1948 and Larry in 1950.

Sylvester and his brothers became better known in their predominantly African-American community by their nicknames, with Sylvester's being "Dooni".

Sylvester considered his father to be a "lowlife" because he was an adulterer and left his wife and children when the boys were still young.

During Sylvester's childhood, his mother gave birth to three more children by different fathers before marrying Robert "Sonny" Hurd in the early 1960s, with whom she adopted three foster children.

A supervisor at aerospace manufacturer North American Rockwell, Hurd's job increased the family income and they were able to move into a more expensive, predominantly white neighborhood north of Watts.

Primarily active in the genres of disco, rhythm and blues, and soul, he was known for his flamboyant and androgynous appearance, falsetto singing voice, and hit disco singles in the late 1970s and 1980s.

Born in Watts, Los Angeles, to a middle-class African-American family, Sylvester developed a love of singing through the gospel choir of his Pentecostal church.

Leaving the church after the congregation expressed disapproval of his homosexuality, he found friendship among a group of Black cross-dressers and transgender women who called themselves the Disquotays.

Moving to San Francisco in 1970 at the age of 22, Sylvester embraced the counterculture and joined the avant-garde drag troupe the Cockettes, producing solo segments of their shows which were heavily influenced by female blues and jazz singers such as Billie Holiday and Josephine Baker.

During the Cockettes' critically panned tour of New York City, Sylvester left them to pursue his career elsewhere.

During the late 1970s, Sylvester gained The Moniker of the "Queen of Disco" and during his life he attained particular recognition in San Francisco, where he was awarded the key to the city.

He came to front Sylvester and his Hot Band, a rock act that released two commercially unsuccessful albums on Blue Thumb Records in 1973 before disbanding.

Focusing on a solo career, Sylvester signed a recording contract with Harvey Fuqua of Fantasy Records and obtained three new backing singers in the form of Martha Wash and Izora Rhodes – the "Two Tons O' Fun" – as well as Jeanie Tracy.

His first solo album, Sylvester (1977), was a moderate success.

This was followed with the acclaimed disco album Step II (1978), which spawned the singles "You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)" and "Dance (Disco Heat)", both of which were hits in the US and Europe.

Distancing himself from the disco genre, he recorded four more albums – including a live album – with Fantasy Records.

After leaving this label, he signed to Megatone Records, the dance-oriented company founded by friend and collaborator Patrick Cowley, where he recorded four more albums, including the Cowley penned hit Hi-NRG track "Do Ya Wanna Funk".

Sylvester was an activist who campaigned against the spread of HIV/AIDS.

He died from complications arising from the virus in 1988, leaving all future royalties from his work to San Francisco-based HIV/AIDS charities.

In 2005, he was posthumously inducted into the Dance Music Hall of Fame, while his life has been recorded in a biography and made the subject of both a documentary and a musical.

Letha and her three sons moved to a downtown housing project at Aliso Village before moving back into her parental home at 114th Street in Watts.

Letha was a devout adherent of the Pentecostal denomination of Christianity, regularly attending the Palm Lane Church of God in Christ in South Los Angeles.

Sylvester and his brothers accompanied her to the church's services, where he developed a particular interest in gospel music.

Having been an avid singer since the age of three, Sylvester regularly joined in with gospel performances; he sang the song "My Buddy" at the funeral of one of the other children in the Park Lane congregation.

The women at his church described him as "feminine" and "as pretty as he could be, just like his mother. He wasn't rough like the other boys. He was prim and proper. We were always hugging on him and kissing on him, because he was so cute."

Family members also described him as "his own kind of boy - 'born funny'" - preferring the company of girls and women like his grandmother to that of other boys.

"He stayed inside a lot, reading encyclopedias, listening to music, and playing his grandmother's piano."

When Sylvester would turn down the boys' invitations to play with them, they would say things like, "He act like a girl!"

or "He's going to be a girl."

But his mother would defend him, including his joy at dressing up in her and his grandmother's clothes, saying that he was not a girl, just a different kind of boy, and a valued part of their family.

At the age of eight, he was sexually molested by a man at the church—at the time rumored to be the church organist; although Sylvester would always maintain that this interaction had been consensual and not sexual molestation, Sylvester was only a child at the time of this incident while the assailant was an adult.

Sylvester was taken to a doctor after receiving injuries when this man subjected the child to anal sex.

It was this doctor who informed Letha that her son was gay, something that she could not accept, viewing homosexual activity as a perversion and a sin.

News of Sylvester's "homosexual activity" (actually, having been raped) soon spread through the church congregation and, feeling unwelcome, he ceased his attendance at age 13.