Betsy Kalin:

I think we're all set Rupert.

Rupert Kinnard:

Great.

Betsy Kalin:

So just one thing to keep in mind is that my voice might not be heard on some of your interview. So, if I ask you a question please try and rephrase my question in your answer. I'm sure you've done this a lot,

Betsy Kalin:

so that's familiar too. If you could give your name, date, and place of birth, that would be great.

Rupert Kinnard:

My name is Rupert Kinnard, I was born in Chicago in 1954.

Betsy Kalin:

Great, thank you. And can you tell me about your family growing up and your parents and siblings?

Rupert Kinnard:

My parents are from Mississippi and they got married in 1950 and had my first sister in 1952. In 1954, I was born. After I was born came three other sisters and each of us are

Rupert Kinnard:

pretty much two years apart.

Betsy Kalin:

Did they move to Chicago when they met or when did they move to Chicago?

Rupert Kinnard:

Well, they moved to Chicago though actually after my first sister was born. They were just part of the African American migration from the south to the north. It was a pretty

Rupert Kinnard:

common thing back in the 40s and the 50s, and I guess even some of the 60s, that the oldest sibling would go to the bigger cities and get a job, get a place to live become a little settled and then bring the next sibling up. That's been a really fascinating part of my history when I'm able to talk to some of my relatives, my aunts and uncles about what that was like.

Betsy Kalin:

What was it like growing up in Chicago at that time?

Rupert Kinnard:

I remember really one of the first places I remember that we lived was the west side of Chicago and it was our like Racine and Lawndale, no Roosevelt and Lawndale. It was in an apartment building which eventually became really run down and

Rupert Kinnard:

just wasn't very well kept. The thing I remember about that period of time is that I think it is because my aunts and uncles, when they moved to Chicago, they pretty much, in the beginning, ended up living in the same area. I had four siblings, and in the very same building, I remember we lived, we had cousins in that building, aunts and cousins, and then

Rupert Kinnard:

maybe a block or two away, there was another family of Kinnards, Wiggins and Baggetts. I remember it being pretty joyous in terms of really being close to my cousins. They really were like my best friends. Then eventually, we ended up moving to what's called the projects. We went from one apartment

Rupert Kinnard:

in a small apartment building to the 16th floor of, I guess it was considered public housing at that time. The thing I remember about it the most is that when we moved into this building, it had 16 stories and it was brand new. There was no stigma attached to living in the projects at that time. I was just really in awe of the fact

Rupert Kinnard:

that we lived on the 16th floor. So, you just had this incredible panoramic view of Chicago. In the beginning, there was just absolutely no negativity attached to living in this building, but eventually I really started realizing mostly because of what I saw on television, families living in single family homes. I started realizing how,

Rupert Kinnard:

I don't know, the situation was where we were living. Because not only did we live in a 16-story building that had 11 apartments on each floor, that building was part of three buildings. The concentration of people you had in a small area; it wasn't until years later I realized the impact that had on so many of the people living in that environment.

Betsy Kalin:

Would you say it was a good impact or a not so favorable impact?

Rupert Kinnard:

It was what?

Betsy Kalin:

Was that a good impact? I wasn't sure what you were trying to say about the impact that that had.

Rupert Kinnard:

No, the idea of living in such a small area with so many people, I think, I felt the effects of it at the time, but I didn't really have a way to kind of analyze it

Rupert Kinnard:

or understand what was negative about it. The building we lived in, I think was the case with the other buildings, there were two elevators, as I said, a 16-story building with 11 apartments on each floor. In the winter, if something would happen to both elevators, you'd have to,

Rupert Kinnard:

I didn't mind necessarily going up 16 flights of stairs, but it used to pain me to think that my mom had to do it. As time went on, the staircases became fairly dangerous places. For me, the point is I felt the effects of living in a small area with such a giant concentration of people, but that ended up paving the way

Rupert Kinnard:

for when we moved, which I think was in 1966. It was great in terms of my father, my parents, that we ended up in this public housing building. My father and my parents were able to save up money to put a down payment on a home, an actual house. The switch from living in the projects to moving into a home was --

Rupert Kinnard:

I just don't think it could be over exaggerated. Our family lived on the 16th floor of the project, so we didn't have anyone above us, but we had people below us and living on either side of us. The idea of being in such a big building and then moving into a house where everything is yours and I absolutely was

Rupert Kinnard:

freaked out that we had a backyard. We had a basement, we had a second floor, we had a family room. It really was amazing just because you had what was going on with TV families. It's like, you'd always be exposed to a life of people living in homes. And you could look at your own surroundings at the time and think I don't live in a house. I live in this giant building.

Rupert Kinnard:

It was a revelation when we moved into our house.

Betsy Kalin:

That's great. Thank you. Thanks for sharing that. I'm a city person. That's why I needed clarification. Because I'm used to living surrounded. I lived in New York for a number of years in San Francisco and LA, Boston. I'm used to living among crowds of people.

Rupert Kinnard:

Yeah. Yeah.

Betsy Kalin:

Something else that I wanted to ask you about is you kind of said this a little in your questionnaire,

Betsy Kalin:

but did you feel different when you were younger? Like when did you start asking yourself questions about your sexuality?

Rupert Kinnard:

I did feel different when I was younger because I was really aware of what or how young men behaved. I knew a lot of guys when I lived in the project who were part of gangs and

Rupert Kinnard:

I knew that they were into sports and I knew that they were crazy about girls, and I was really aware that none of those things interest me at all, but I was really pretty much an introvert in terms of my creativity. There were so many little hobbies and projects I would become involved in that I really just enjoyed. I got a lot of

Rupert Kinnard:

positive feedback from relatives, my mom in particular, the kind of things I could create from nothing. I used to buy these plastic model hobby kits and you open up the box and there'd be hundreds of little pieces. All I needed was a tube of cement glue and I would turn this box of miscellaneous pieces into an aircraft

Rupert Kinnard:

or a fighter carrier. Those were some of the earlier models I put together in modeled cars and eventually graduated to dinosaurs, and the dinosaurs that I put together were, I think, the first plastic model hobby kits that I actually painted. I graduated, I would say, from the plastic dinosaur model kits to superheroes.

Rupert Kinnard:

No, actually I think I went from the dinosaurs to movie monsters. Once again, you'd open up the box and there's all these pieces and my mom was just in awe that I could make sense of those pieces. Then from there I went to the superhero model kits.

Betsy Kalin:

When did you begin drawing?

Rupert Kinnard:

Well, the superhero model kits was the main jump out point

Rupert Kinnard:

to starting to read comic books. I really don't think I read the comics even before I started doing the play model of kits, but once I started reading the comic book, I think I always doodled, but once I started getting into superhero comics, I just became crazed and I just started drawing tons and tons of the superheroes that were in the comics that I read.

Rupert Kinnard:

I learned how to draw Superman pretty well, the whole Spiderman, Fantastic Four, and I ended up gaining notoriety in the neighborhood as someone who could draw those superheroes.

Betsy Kalin:

Did you have a sense of your attraction to other boys at that time?

Rupert Kinnard:

I did. Definitely in -- Well, I thought high school, but no, even in grade school

Rupert Kinnard:

there was something about even being known as an artist that got me a certain degree of admiration. I knew that I really appreciated the admiration from other young men who were certainly within my age group. Yeah, I knew that I would have crushes on them, a number of boys that I went to school with.

Rupert Kinnard:

It was pretty clear to me that I was having the kind of crushes on the boys that the boys had on the girls and that the girls had on the boys. But there was never ever anything traumatic about it, nothing difficult about it. I never struggled with it, for me. It was really kind of an acceptance of 'I'm attracted to other boys'.

Betsy Kalin:

Great. Did you know anyone else in your community who was LGBT or anything like that?

Rupert Kinnard:

That's interesting. I really didn't until I was in high school. There were some young men who were pretty effeminate, and I knew I had something in common with them because I knew that they were

Rupert Kinnard:

also attracted to the same sex, but I don't think there was very much -- I wasn't very confused about the fact that they were different than I was in terms of the way they presented themselves. It was kind of weird because you kind of realized that they were attracted to the same sex, but they also had this effect, affect,

Rupert Kinnard:

I guess, this way of being that I found it a little off putting in the very beginning, but I remember meeting this gay young man in high school. That was really the beginning of my admiring the fact that he was determined to be who he was. I haven't thought of that for many years, but I do remember,

Rupert Kinnard:

I think it's interesting for me to realize that I was so young when I met an African American gay man who was very flamboyant and I can remember the beginning being off putting, and then I remember having respect for him because it was just so clear. He wasn't going to lower his flame for anyone. As I say, that was

Rupert Kinnard:

the beginning of my having a lot of respect for kind of a wide range of gay men.

Betsy Kalin:

Oh, that's a beautiful story. Thank you. Can you talk a little bit about your high school and going to Metro and you could give the full name? That would be great.

Rupert Kinnard:

First of all, when I graduated from grade school,

Rupert Kinnard:

that grade school was outside of my district in Chicago. I ended up going to a grade school that was in the process of changing over from being mostly white to eventually all black. I had so many experiences with just going through -- It is kind of like the beginning of a racial awareness.

Rupert Kinnard:

It was really huge in grade school because I tell the story that I pushed a white kid and he pushed me back and I called him the N word and he and his buddy started laughing at me and they said I was the one that word was referring to, and I never knew that. In my old neighborhood

Rupert Kinnard:

the word, it was like, you call someone a chump. I didn't know it had racial overtones. I was pretty young when I found that out. But going to that school outside my district made me eligible to go to a high school that was outside my district. That high school was even further south. It ended up having quite a mixture of

Rupert Kinnard:

African American students and white students. I was there for two years, my freshman and sophomore year, and I just did progressively worse in school. I hated school. I hated being forced to do anything. I thought I could not have been more bored. I ended up having to go to a -- I think it was called a continuation school.

Rupert Kinnard:

It was a school that I was supposed to go to for a year to get my grades up and then go back into a normal public high school. I went to that school and it was kind of a work study situation. It was an interesting enough school that I did do better. But after that year, the intention was to send me back to Morgan Park High School,

Rupert Kinnard:

and I thought, well, what sense does that make? It's really worse because I have a sense of a structure that's actually serving me enough for me to be excited about it, or at least tolerate it. There was a young man in my neighborhood who was like my longest running friend at this point, Vince Waldron. He lived in my neighborhood and at one point I found out that he was going to a high school

Rupert Kinnard:

that he would rave about. He would talk about the school that the only way you could get in was through a lottery. I'm thinking, 'Ooh, that's special.' After I was at the end of what was called the double E program, education and employment, that was the school I went to, kind of, between high schools. There was a counselor there who also knew about Metro, which the official name of it

Rupert Kinnard:

was the Chicago Public High School for Metropolitan Studies. Between my friend, Vince, being able to put in the good word for me at Metro and the high school counselor, I ended up getting into Metro and I'm very fond of saying the catchphrase for the school was "The school without walls." That was the beginning of me living my life without walls,

Rupert Kinnard:

because there were students at Metro who were from every school district in Chicago. The diversity of students was pretty mind blowing. It just gave me this opportunity to really be exposed to so many different backgrounds and cultures.

Betsy Kalin:

I know you talked, also, about not just what the

Betsy Kalin:

diversity was like, but like your experiences at Metro that helped you kind of direct you to doing more creative work.

Rupert Kinnard:

Well, absolutely. The main difference that Metro had going for it than the other high schools is that we had our classes all over the city of Chicago.

Rupert Kinnard:

When I first got to Metro, the whole attitude was we're a great school. It was pass or fail. They didn't have letter grades. If you failed, you were kicked out. They knew it was a great school. They knew it was a great opportunity. It wasn't like they kept their foot on your neck saying, we're going to suspend you until you do something about your tardiness, you're being late every day.

Rupert Kinnard:

They weren't punishment based as I experienced normal high school to be, they were like, this is a great school, either you pass or you fail. After semester, if you fail, you're gonna get kicked out. I feel like for the first couple of days there, I thought, wow, if they're not gonna make me do anything, I'm not gonna do anything. Then I thought, well, wait a minute, there's some good things here. I had

Rupert Kinnard:

biology classes at the shared aquarium and at Lincoln Park Zoo, I had an improvisational theater class at second city in Chicago, a whole different part of the city than I lived. I had a creative writing class that was taught by one of the editors of Playboy magazine. The classes were held at the Playboy magazine offices.

Rupert Kinnard:

Everything about the structure of Metro excited me because it was just unusual. You were in your element in the element of the subject matters of each of the classes. One of my favorite memories is we had a fairly basic class like algebra in an office building and across the hall from where we had our classes,

Rupert Kinnard:

I found out was an advertising agency. There was something about that as a creative young man that just thrilled me. Finally, I went over to the office and I wanted these guys to tell me what they did there. I was probably a junior at that time. And they explained to me as an advertising agency what they did, but they were just as excited to hear why once a week, are you

Rupert Kinnard:

students across the hall? What kind of school is this? And I explained to them what it was, and they were pretty intrigued by the idea. I said, "Students are also capable of getting classes for Metro." I went back to school and I told my counselor Judy Quanbeck that I knew these guys who were part of this advertising agency,

Rupert Kinnard:

and they were interested in developing a class for the school and they did. It was called Advertising Communication. It was a prime example of why the school was so special because the students who joined that class. I was really proud that I was a part of making it happen, but I loved the class. We interacted with actual clients. I remember it was Allied Van Lines,

Rupert Kinnard:

and it was up to the students to come up with a print campaign, a radio campaign, and a visual, like a magazine campaign. At the end of the semester, all the students presented our ideas to the actual clients.

Betsy Kalin:

That's fantastic. Oh, wow!

Rupert Kinnard:

It was amazing. I ended up graduating in '73,

Rupert Kinnard:

and it was just one of the proudest moments of my life up until that point.

Betsy Kalin:

What did you do after you graduated before you went to college?

Rupert Kinnard:

Well, first of all, after I graduated, I had an incredible opportunity to become a part of another work study program. It was at a place in Arizona called Arcosanti.

Rupert Kinnard:

It's where a lot of people actually paid to be a student of this guy who was an architect, Paolo Soleri was his name. It involved my first cross country car trip to get there. After the three months were up,

Rupert Kinnard:

it was the first time I took an airplane ride, and it was from Phoenix, Arizona back to Chicago. That was a real pivotal part of my development in terms of really feeling independent. I eventually did go back to Chicago and I got a job, a little job at a daycare center. Before the year is out, I ended up

Rupert Kinnard:

getting my own apartment in Hyde Park in Chicago. Shortly after that, I ended up getting a job at the Chicago Sun-Times/Daily News, they were together. That was a really special place for me to be because it was a very creative place. I worked in the promotion department, purely clerical work, but the

Rupert Kinnard:

promotion department did have a small art department, and I pretty much fell in love with the guys who worked there. They were just really a great group of artists. But one of my jobs was to deliver daily additions of the newspaper to different departments. One of the departments was the editorial art department. I was in seventh heaven when I would

Rupert Kinnard:

go there, because I see all of these creative artists doing work and I would always go to the arts editor saying, "You know, I draw, I really would love to get the opportunity to draw something that gets published." He ignored me for the most part until I really felt like I bugged him enough that he said, "Okay, look, there's going to be an article

Rupert Kinnard:

on Redd Fox. If you draw something and I like it, I would consider it." I ended up drawing three different renditions of Redd Fox and he liked one of them. It was really incredible that he gave me the red light to finish the drawing, which was very complex because it was to be printed in color. But what I had to do was create

Rupert Kinnard:

line art for it and then create color overlays, which is something I think people involved in graphic arts wouldn't know anything about because of the desktop publishing explosion, but the color overlays were fairly difficult. I have to tell the story that the first time I went into the press room, one day,

Rupert Kinnard:

my daily duties, picking up recent addition of the paper, and I'd done the drawing and I submitted it and then, to me, it just disappeared. I didn't know what was going to happen, but here I am in this giant printing room that has barges of additions of the newspaper. I look on the ground at one point, and for the first time I saw my drawing on the cover of the entertainment section

Rupert Kinnard:

in full color and my heart left and I looked around and there was this giant barge thing structure that was just nothing but the Sunday entertainment inserts, and it was my drawing times a thousand and I almost fainted actually

Rupert Kinnard:

because I was just so excited. That was really the beginning of my creative career right then, I mean, in high school, I did a couple of illustrations for our school newspaper, and I actually did a film review or two. That was pretty cool. I think I probably saw that cover of the entertainment section on the floor of

Rupert Kinnard:

the print room, I wanna say probably on a Wednesday. It wasn't until that Sunday, that edition, the Sunday paper came out and phone calls I got from relatives -- Because they gave me a credit, my name was mentioned in the caption of the illustration. That was amazing. I got a chance to do

Rupert Kinnard:

another illustration for the art department and I became excited because I thought, well I'm on my way eventually. I will probably be able to be a part of the art department, but I was eventually told that no, there's no way you're actually gonna get a job without a college degree. I became a little frustrated with that, but even at the time that I was with the Chicago Sun-Times

Rupert Kinnard:

they had a bit of a scholarship, a fund to help employees continue their education. I ended up going to the American Academy of Art for a semester, and that was really cool because I did a lot of life drawing and kind of areas of art that I hadn't been that familiar with. That ended up being pretty cool.

Betsy Kalin:

How did you end up at Cornell college?

Rupert Kinnard:

I really enjoyed the two years that I worked at the Chicago Sun-Times. I had my own apartment, my studio apartment in Hyde Park and I had my little car and I really felt, for a certain period, that I was living a good life, but towards the tail end of those two years, I just felt

Rupert Kinnard:

like I wanted something drastic to happen that I really wanted to change. One of the benefits of having gone to Metro was, one weekend, I had a high school counselor, Judy Quanbeck, who every year would take a group of students to visit three colleges in Iowa, Cornell, Coe College and Grinnell college.

Rupert Kinnard:

That was an eye opener because it was during the time when I was a high school student and I got a chance to get a taste of what it would be like to live on a college campus. I remembered just thinking it was the coolest thing because I connected with the black students on campus throughout that weekend. But then, I came back, finished up my senior year at Metro and graduated

Rupert Kinnard:

and then spent those two years working at The Sun-Times and having my own place. When I started feeling like I really felt out, like I really wanted a change of life, I remembered Cornell. For some reason, I also applied at the University of Wisconsin, Green Bay and I applied to Cornell because Cornell was really in my heart because I had found memories of having visited.

Rupert Kinnard:

The coolest thing that happened was I applied to Cornell and I think I probably applied in September of '74 or '75, and I got accepted. I was accepted to Cornell, but I was being accepted for the fall of '76. But

Rupert Kinnard:

then I was told "If you wanna come second semester of this year, you could do it." So, I was accepted to Cornell for the next year, towards the end of '75 and I ended up dropping everything and going to Cornell in January of '76.

Betsy Kalin:

Had you come out by that point or did it take you going to college?

Rupert Kinnard:

No, I had a community of these that I was a part of when pretty much those two years that I lived on my own. I met a number of men who became mentors to me and we went out to clubs together and everything. There was almost like this collision of immersing myself in African American culture and queer culture.

Rupert Kinnard:

I read a lot of books that were LGBTQ oriented and a lot about African American history. But yeah, I had a community, a group of friends in Chicago even before I went to Cornell. It was interesting going to Cornell, January of '76,

Rupert Kinnard:

already having lived on my own for two years. I really wasn't very active in college. There was no gay student union on campus. It ended up being a couple of years of just not really getting in touch with that part of myself, being a gay young man.

Rupert Kinnard:

But I did belong to the African American student union. We were definitely immersed in the culture and we would be responsible for creating events for black history month, that kind of thing, and bringing lecturers onto the college campus. I was really involved with a lot of that.

Betsy Kalin:

When was the

Betsy Kalin:

Brown Bomber being published? Like when did you create that?

Rupert Kinnard:

The Brown Bomber. It was the summer of '76. It was the summer of '76 and I was in Chicago during summer break from college and I had a little a job that it was like a data entry position

Rupert Kinnard:

and it was the coolest job because I was involved in data entry in the evening, and I was the only one there constantly switching cartridges, all kinds of little things like that, I was by myself. I created sketchbooks monthly. I would buy a blank book and I would sketch and write in it. This one time

Rupert Kinnard:

I was just drawing little characters, but I have to back up a little bit because I had already created this superhero as a result of drawing Marvel and DC superheroes for the longest time. Then I decided I wanted to create my own superheroes. I really had a lot of fun with that. But once

Rupert Kinnard:

during my time in high school, I just started becoming more and more intrigued by Muhammad Ali. He just became such a hero of mine. I started reading James Baldwin's essays and novels and between the two of those men I just gained this way of looking at the world, and it was like

Rupert Kinnard:

a weird moment when I started looking at these superheroes that I had created. I literally was like, damn, I'm creating white superheroes because that's all I saw in the comic books. And just with this awareness I had through my association with Muhammad Ali and James Baldwin, I actually became angry. The way I describe it

Rupert Kinnard:

is I felt like I had been bamboozled by the world forcing me as an African American to only see the world through these white superheroes. I created all kinds of black superheroes, but I got to the point where I created this one and he was called Superbad. Superbad had this huge Afro, which I always describe as, the way I drew it, I wanted the character

Rupert Kinnard:

to strike fear in the hearts of all white people. I really was going through this period of time where I just became more and more and more aware of the injustices that had been heaped upon people of color. It was really mostly intensified by the pivotal discovery of what had happened to Emmett Till. Emmett Till was a young

Rupert Kinnard:

African American man from Chicago who would visit his relatives in Mississippi. That was me; our family, every summer, we would go down to visit my grandmother in particular. It was years after it had happened to Emmett Till, I think it did happen in 1954 or '55, and it was

Rupert Kinnard:

in the 70s when I learned about Emmett Till the first time. I actually went to the library to look up an issue of Ebony magazine to get details, and I can't even describe how it affected me. I kept thinking this can't be real. It was one of those situations where I became really angry

Rupert Kinnard:

with the actual thing that happened to Emmett Till, but all you would hear was that he had potentially whistled at a white woman and had been found in a river, Tallahassee River. And then bit by bit, you started finding out more details. Not only did they stab him, but bit by bit,

Rupert Kinnard:

I started finding out every single thing these white men did to this young African American kid from Chicago. When you think that you couldn't get more angry about the whole thing, then you start reading about the trial. Then you start getting a sense of this whole different type of justice or lack of justice.

Rupert Kinnard:

I just say all that to say is that was a pivotal part and creating this really angry, violent black superhero. I would draw these adventures and Superbad, which just attacked these white people. It was the very, very beginning of the catharsis nature of my comics. It really served the purpose because once I ended up at Cornell and during summer break, I was

Rupert Kinnard:

drawing cartoon characters. By then, I was really fascinated by Martin Luther King and another boxer, Joe Lewis, whose nickname was the Brown Bomber. I thought, 'wow, the Brown Bomber would be the cool name for a superhero.' Then I started trying to draw a character that would match the name. I created him and I became very, very stuck on drawing him everywhere.

Rupert Kinnard:

When I ended up going to Cornell, my sophomore year, and I was invited to create an editorial cartoon for the editorial page of the school newspaper, I thought, 'oh, it'd be so cool to incorporate the Brown Bomber in that,' part of my Brown Bomber obsession. But then I became very aware that it was the editorial page, and that was the beginning of my wanting to

Rupert Kinnard:

express my own politics and my own observations about what was going on the college campus.

Betsy Kalin:

That was my next question. Why was it so important to address injustice and oppression and those things through the format of comics and editorial?

Rupert Kinnard:

Well, it was only because of the kind

Rupert Kinnard:

of the literary world I immersed myself in. I was just reading so much, and I'd gotten to the point where I so admired the freedom fighters, people who were truly seeking justice. It really literally was largely because the cartoons was going to be on the editorial page that I thought it just

Rupert Kinnard:

seemed natural, it was natural that the Brown Bomber would be a champion against all these injustices that were not only going on in the world and in this country, but even on the college campus. It was a mixture of commentary about serious things. It also poked fun at just campus life in general.

Betsy Kalin:

Great. Thank you. You mentioned this when you were talking about Superbad, but your comics are called Cathartic Comics. Can you talk about the importance of that?

Rupert Kinnard:

Well, when the comic trip started at Cornell, which obviously was the first place it had ever been published, the strip really revolved around the Brown Bomber. The strip itself was called the Brown Bomber, and

Rupert Kinnard:

it wasn't until I graduated from Cornell in '79, got the opportunity to visit the west coast through a really dear friend of mine who was an English professor at Cornell, Steven Lacey, offered me and a good friend of mine, Phil Luing, the opportunity to take a road trip from Iowa to Portland.

Rupert Kinnard:

We visited Ashland, San Francisco, Santa Barbara and LA. I had just graduated. I had a senior art thesis show where I sold some of my artwork. I had a little bit of money where I could travel. Upon graduating, the idea was that I was going to go back to Chicago, where my family were and where I lived before, but given the opportunity, before I went back to Chicago,

Rupert Kinnard:

to take this trip was really great. The upshot of it is that I fell in love with Portland. I ended up moving to Portland, especially after experiencing a winter in Portland. It was so much milder than the winters in the Midwest. I thought, well, I'm not going back. I'm choosing to be in a place with a milder climate. Moving to Portland, I became aware that there was a local newspaper called the

Rupert Kinnard:

Northwest Fountain. It was a gay newspaper, and at the time that's what it was considered. There was no LGBTQ questioning, it was just gay. It was at the beginning of the kind of the emergence of a lesbian community, women identifying as lesbians. But this paper, at the time, was considered a gay newspaper, and that was the first place the Brown Bomber ran in Portland. Once again,

Rupert Kinnard:

the name of the strip was the Brown Bomber, and he was the main character, but eventually this friend of mine who ended up working for another newspaper that followed the Northwest Fountain, the newspaper was called Cascade Voice, Renée LaChance, fast becoming a good friend of mine. I was doing some work for the Cascade Voice

Rupert Kinnard:

and Renee and a good friend of hers, Jay Brown, were working for that same paper. Ultimately that paper really didn't address issues that had to do with the diversity of the community, the queer community at that time. And bless Renee and Jay's hearts, they couldn't take it, they really wanted the paper

Rupert Kinnard:

to be more responsive to the diversity of the queer community. At the time I was working for an alternative news weekly, Willamette Week, and there, I was really, really learning more and more about graphic design and art direction. Every once in a while, they would come to me for an illustration. That was always a thrill, I would do something with a peer in that paper.

Rupert Kinnard:

Jay and Renee at one point came to me and said, "We want to start our own queer newspaper. We really want you to be a part of it." At the time, I laughed, I chuckled. I said, "Well, the big boy on the block is the Cascade Voice. You guys starting a newspaper, I don't know how you're gonna with this newspaper that seems well established." I said, "Well, get a printing date and an office space, and we'll work on

Rupert Kinnard:

designing the initial design and the format for the paper." Sure enough, not that long after, maybe a month or so, they came and said, "We're ready." I went, oh, damn. We did the initial design for the newspaper, and Just Out was born. At some point, Renee knew that I did a comic strip and they wanted to

Rupert Kinnard:

include a gay comic strip in the paper. I was really excited because it's like the Brown Bomber is going to live again. I think the first comic strip was called the Brown Bomber, but I realized the dedication Renee and Jay had for the paper to be a paper for lesbians and gays and bisexuals at that time, so I really felt the comic strip should not only reflect

Rupert Kinnard:

a gay male perspective, it should also at least attempt to convey a lesbian sensibility as much as I'm capable of creating. With the creation of Diva, the comic show was changed to Cathartic Comics.

Betsy Kalin:

Tell me more about Diva Touché Flambé, who I love.

Rupert Kinnard:

Well, the first job I had when I moved to Portland was at a steamship company. Once again, it was a totally clerical job. and there was another younger gay man who worked there, Michael Calder, I'd love to be able to give him some of the credit because he was a gay guy, young guy,

Rupert Kinnard:

somewhat flamboyant, but we would just have fun, one day, we thought we should come up with the great drag queen name. And so, we kept throwing around different names. I thought, well, if it's a drag queen that I'm trying to come up with a name for it. She has to be a diva, so we thought, okay, diva should be in there. She'd be something like an announcement.

Rupert Kinnard:

We ended up coming up with Touché, Diva Touché. We thought that alone was a cool name. And then I remember thinking, God, it was so cool that she had three names, and if the third name rhymed with the first name or the second name, and I said, Diva Touché Flambé. With diva,

Rupert Kinnard:

I came up with the name first, and then I needed to come up with a persona for someone who had that name. With the Brown Bomber, I think I came up with the character first, and then once I became familiar with Joe Lewis, I thought, oh, this would be a cool name for the Brown Bomber. That's when I decided, even before Michael Jackson, I decided

Rupert Kinnard:

it would be cool for the Brown Bomber to have only one boxing glove. In my mind, Michael Jackson saw a comic strip with the Brown Bomber, with one boxing glove and decided to create a one sequin glove, because I did it far before he did.

Betsy Kalin:

Oh, that's great. Okay. That was much faster than five minutes. Yeah. That was great.

Betsy Kalin:

Next, I kind of wanna get into your activism and your involvement in different organizations and in the community in Portland. Can you talk about, I think I have here that you joined the Portland town council as the first African American board member in 1984?

Rupert Kinnard:

Yes.

Betsy Kalin:

Can you talk a little bit about that?

Rupert Kinnard:

It doesn't seem like I was in Portland for very long before I started meeting a number of the members of the community who were really involved in queer rights in Oregon, specifically Kathleen Saadat and Cliff Jones are

Rupert Kinnard:

some of the first people I met that were politically active here. It was really the beginning of, I would say, a lot of the cities around the country starting to develop pride parades and marches. I was aware that there was this organization -- and I think even at the time it was fairly new --

Rupert Kinnard:

called Portland Town Council. The guy who was the figurehead for the group would appear on local news every once in a while. I was aware that this organization existed. I think I had a little visibility in Portland because of Just Out, the newspaper.

Rupert Kinnard:

Because for some reason, I got a call from the guy who was the head of Portland Town Council one day and he wanted to have lunch. I was really flattered because to me, he was a little bit of a celebrity that I would see on TV and he represented a lot of the gay community at the time, so I was excited. I had no idea why he would want to have lunch with me.

Rupert Kinnard:

We met at a place that was dear to my heart, a restaurant bar called Wilde Oscars here in Portland, long gone. But we met there as I said, I remember being a bit enamored of him, but he started talking about the goals of the organization. He wanted to bring in a more diverse board of directors. I think I already met

Rupert Kinnard:

someone who was on the board, Mary Forst, and I think at some point I figured that she might have been the person who mentioned me to this guy. Bit by bit, as we were talking, I think it was even before he actually invited me to join the board. He was talking about how they wanted the organization to accomplish a number of things,

Rupert Kinnard:

things having to do with the rights of same sex couples. He was talking about bringing more women onto the board, but he was saying that it was kind of difficult because the women would have these other considerations and he felt like they were kind of watering down the gist of what

Rupert Kinnard:

the group should do, and there were these considerations he had to make. I'm sitting there as an African American and I'm thinking this sounds kind of familiar. What I ended up thinking is that it seems as if he has this commitment towards diversity, but not a commitment towards really knowing what that entails, because obviously what it entails is getting the opinion of these

Rupert Kinnard:

people who have different perspectives about what some of these goals could be. At least they have different perspectives with how you should forward into bringing more people to become involved with the group. He eventually said, "We would like to interview you with the possibility of being

Rupert Kinnard:

a member of the board." I thought, okay. But I did challenge him, I said, "Why wouldn't you want to listen to what the women are telling you? They're bringing a different voice to this." I remember thinking -- There was just something about

Rupert Kinnard:

the idea of wanting to be committed to having women on the board, but not listening to what they had to say, and he came across to me as thinking of the women being on the board as a nuisance. I mean, that might be strong language, but that really, at the time, I felt like he wanted me to agree with him. And I felt like I understood where the women were coming from,

Rupert Kinnard:

I couldn't agree with him. But I really think that they were almost desperate to have some faces of color on that board. I knew that if I was on the board, I wasn't going to be just a face, I knew I was really going to try to make a difference. What ended up happening is I became a member of the board and I would go to board meetings. I would say things like, "I really think you guys

Rupert Kinnard:

should reach out more to these communities of color. This queer community is a very diverse community." Basically, what I ended up being told was, "Well, you are a member of the board, if you want to take that on, you do it." I was a little discouraged by that, but I said, "Okay, I'll take that up." I remember thinking there might be a way to have a kind of a subgroup within Portland Town Council.

Rupert Kinnard:

I did come up with the name Diversity Alliance. I thought that really says what I would want to accomplish within this. A number of other people got on board. In an interesting way, when I look back on it, because recently I've looked back on flyers and posters. We really served as a fundraising part

Rupert Kinnard:

of Portland town council. We just created these forums, homophobia, sexism, and racism, and how they're not alike. We would have a speaker from the African American community come and speak. We had a forum that dealt with being Jewish and being gay. We would

Rupert Kinnard:

sponsor these dances and everything at its core for us is that we wanted to bring a diverse group of people together. Every event we had, we felt like we were really doing a good job at that. That really was the beginning of being a part of this community in a political way. Then of course, every year, I don't remember the first year, I think there

Rupert Kinnard:

was a lesbian and gay pride, or gay pride, at that time. Even before I moved to Portland, I don't remember year was my first lesbian and gay pride. I suspect it would've been 1980 or '81, but that really got me going because when you have a group of white gay people, even white lesbian and gay people,

Rupert Kinnard:

they don't know how to do the outreach to these other communities. It was really important to a number of us that, even when you're inviting guests to be grand Marshall or speakers, we're like, this is mighty white. It was frustrating but rewarding, being able to expand their visions in the way they were looking at things.

Rupert Kinnard:

It was quite complicated in a lot of ways. One of the pivotal things that happened that I have to bring up is that there's that collision between racism and homophobia at one of the gay right marches. There was a white gay man dressed as Aunt Jemima in black face. And

Rupert Kinnard:

we wanna be included too, within all these festivities, and we're like, that is really incredibly offensive. To make your way through the wall of, 'oh, I have the right to do whatever I want,' that's what this is all about, and it's like -- Through that event, I think, were the seeds of

Rupert Kinnard:

what became Just Out. Because the paper, Cascade Voice, covering that event is one of the things that made Renee and Jay say, "This newspaper's not meeting the needs of this community," and that newspaper Cascade Voice, like the queer press before it, they really catered to the bar scene. There were mostly gay male bars in Portland, and a lot of those were white gay male bars,

Rupert Kinnard:

where if you are a gay man of color, that whole phenomenon of going to the bar, you could be in a line to get into a bar or a club, and you would see, one after the other, the men would be going into the entrance and then when they would get to you, they would go "ID please."

Rupert Kinnard:

I always had that little crawl in my gut about so many gay establishments, it was that collision once again, of experiencing racism in the gay community and all the time, also being privy to gay men and celebrating themselves for being so sensitive.

Rupert Kinnard:

"Oh I like being a gay man, because I'm automatically more sensitive." And they could be obviously as sexist or racist as anyone else. Those were a lot of the lessons I was learning around that time.

Betsy Kalin:

What have about founding Black Lesbians and Gay United, and then also Brother to Brother.

Rupert Kinnard:

Specifically out of the Aunt Jemima incident at the gay pride came Black Lesbians and Gay United. It was joyous. It was joyous for us to come together. Sad the reasons that we came together might have been not ideal, but the fact that we can identify ourselves

Rupert Kinnard:

and gather together was really one of the highlights of my living in Portland. What was really great in the beginning is that it was men and women. We would take our culture from all over the country, we were here in Portland from San Francisco, to me, from Chicago,

Rupert Kinnard:

St. Louis. We all ended up in Portland, then we put the word out that we were starting this group. I would say, mostly, it could have been considered social, but there's no way it's not a political act for us to even get together and talk about what we did. It was just really great to

Rupert Kinnard:

get a sense of that shared culture. I mean, the fact that we can get together here in Portland, and we're from all parts of the country, and we get together and we play big west and we are playing card games and it's like, oh my God, this takes me back to when my family played. The food, the music, as I say, it was really quite an incredible thing. I think it fed so many of us,

Rupert Kinnard:

and it was another place you can get together and share stories about being in a place like Portland and reassure one another that your reaction to something that happened to you from something that happened with a white person didn't make you crazy. We all can agree that would drive us crazy. That organization was very, very special.

Rupert Kinnard:

But then I ended up in the same place where I was when I lived in Chicago and I lived on my own for two years after high school. I got to that point where I started getting antsy where life had become a little mundane and I really wanted to change everything.

Rupert Kinnard:

To make a long story short, I ended up moving to the Bay Area and I was there for seven years. When I came back to Portland is when me and a number of other African American gay men got together and wanted to create Brother to Brother.

Betsy Kalin:

Great. Thank you. Actually, you led me again, I was gonna ask you about moving to the Bay Area and your three goals

Betsy Kalin:

for yourself when you moved there.

Rupert Kinnard:

Yeah. One of my dream jobs that I had here in Portland was with Willamette Week. That was one of the jobs I had that made me realize that I really, really enjoy being around creative people. I mean, writers, production people, photographers, illustrators, I just loved it. At one point

Rupert Kinnard:

a number of people were laid off from Willamette Week. I was always a freelance designer, but when I was laid off from alignment week, I became kind of a full-time freelancer. Looking back on it, I think it was very admirable that I was able to even survive because I really catered to a lot of grassroots organizations

Rupert Kinnard:

and progressive groups. I never charged the going rate for my work. I would largely think of what I did as being part volunteering and then getting a little stipend or something on the side. That's really how I got going.

Betsy Kalin:

Your three goals?

Rupert Kinnard:

Once I left Willamette Week and did freelancing at a certain point, I really wanted work in an environment that I missed from Willamette Week, I really wanted to get back to that.

Rupert Kinnard:

I felt everything here was exhausted. There was no place I could even imagine going. Except at one point there was a job in Seattle, art directing job up, and I would've moved to Seattle if I had got that job. I applied for it and didn't get it. Then I became more frustrated. I thought I really did like the Bay Area, the times I visited. I thought, maybe

Rupert Kinnard:

I could give that a try. During the time I was contemplating it, I thought if I left Portland, I would be leaving Portland for three reasons and three things I would want to accomplish if I leave: I would want to get a full-time job as art director of a weekly alternative newspaper, I would want to collect and have published enough of my cartoon strips to be able to pull together

Rupert Kinnard:

a collection to be published, and I wanted to find a mate, I wanted to find a boyfriend. At one point, things became so complicated in Portland with these small communities and people dating one another. I got to the point where I thought, well, I've exhausted the dating pool in Portland, and I'm so excited about the possibility of the Bay Area, because

Rupert Kinnard:

it wasn't just San Francisco, you could be in San Francisco, Oakland or Berkeley. It just all worked out. That's the thing that made me finally move to the Bay Area.

Betsy Kalin:

Great. And then you accomplished all three of those goals?

Rupert Kinnard:

Yeah. It took one step at a time, but when I look back at my career,

Rupert Kinnard:

I am pretty amazed because the way I first got to the Bay Area was I went to visit for a month. I could get feelers out to see if I could come back to Portland and go back to the Bay Area with a job and a place to live. I ended up working for a newspaper that was called Coming Up.

Rupert Kinnard:

My work had been seen by, at least, queer publications across the country, because we all shared subscriptions with one another to see what was going on. Just Out had already gained notoriety for being one of the better designed newspapers. Twice, we got a gay press association award for design. When I applied for the job at Coming Up,

Rupert Kinnard:

I think that really played in my favor. I knew I could go back to Portland, gather up my things and come back to the Bay Area and have a job. That's what I did. Then I had issues. I can't even go into how that ended up being one of the worst jobs I've ever had, I won't. But there was another

Rupert Kinnard:

queer newspaper called the San Francisco Sentinel and working at Coming Up left such a bad taste in my mouth, I thought I don't wanna work with any more queer newspapers, but the Sentinel was a queer newspaper and I had one friend who worked the air and he had another good friend who worked for the paper and

Rupert Kinnard:

they got together and they basically wanted me to join the staff of the Sentinel at least as a production assistant. I thought, okay, well that won't be that much responsibility and it'll be a full-time job. I took it and I ended up working with the art director there. The way the story goes,

Rupert Kinnard:

he wasn't good with his time management, so whenever deadline I would come around, it would be total chaos. At one point I started designing more and more of the paper and I ended up with the title associate art director. The art director at one point went on vacation for like two weeks, and I became director for those two weeks. Every time deadline would roll around, people would say,

Rupert Kinnard:

"What's wrong? It's so calm back here." I said, "I can't work in chaos. I have to be more organized." It wasn't until the art director who was on vacation called the publisher and said can I take another week off? They said, well, take as long as you want, we are not hiring you back. That's how I got the San Francisco Sentinel job.

Rupert Kinnard:

I was there for a couple of years and that paper ended up being bought by a guy who owned a country and Western bar. Had absolutely no journalistic background, and for all intents and purposes, he was trying to imitate -- The biggest gay paper in the Bay Area was the B.A.R, Bay Area Reporter. We at the Sentinel,

Rupert Kinnard:

we didn't want to do what that paper did. It really did cater more to the bar crowd. The Sentinel was definitely a little more highbrow, there's no doubt about it. The new guy who bought it really dogged the staff so badly, he would wanna fire someone without cause. We were an incredibly tight-knit group of people. We were like, no, if you fire him,

Rupert Kinnard:

we're going. We went through mediation and we tried to work it out, but it didn't work out. Just a mass of us, it was something like 9 of the 12 staff members walked out. Then I was really thinking I'm done with newspapers. But I was at home trying to figure out what I was going to do. I knew I was going to

Rupert Kinnard:

make sure I got on unemployment. I got a phone call from someone who was a writer for the Sentinel, also was writer for this publication called Calendar magazine, and Calendar magazine had plans to become a weekly. I think it was a biweekly newspaper and they wanted to become weekly and more of an alternative newspaper,

Rupert Kinnard:

because originally it was more about entertainment. I got this call from the writer saying we are gonna have an opening for an art director and we want an art director who can help us shift into a weekly schedule. And I said, "I'm not sure I want to continue to work for newspapers. I think I might want to go into advertising or just graphic design." He said, "Well, just think about it." I think it was the next day

Rupert Kinnard:

I got another call, and it was from the editor of Calendar magazine and the editor says, "We've seen your work. We think you could really help us; we really like your style." And I was flattered. I said, "I'm just not sure. I need to think about it." Literally about two or three hours later, I got another call and was the publisher of Calendar magazine. He said, "I really want you to try out for this job." The publisher

Rupert Kinnard:

calling me really did it, I thought, okay. And it was probably the cockiest I've ever been on a job interview, because I'm like, well they want me, so I don't feel like I have to sell myself. I'm like, here's my stuff, and they say you're hired. That was the beginning, Calendar magazine became S.F. Weekly. It makes me a little emotional, that job, with that staff,

Rupert Kinnard:

was more than a recreation of what I had at Willamette Week. I was closer to the people at S.F. Weekly than I had been originally. The job situation that I was trying to match in the Bay Area exceeded what I had in Portland. It took those steps to get to one of my ultimate goals.

Rupert Kinnard:

There I was, I was art director of S.F. Weekly and it opened up so many other opportunities, concert tickets. It's just so much when you're involved in the press. I just can't help but acknowledge how much it enriched my life to work for that paper. I don't know how long I was there before I pitched Cathartic Comics

Rupert Kinnard:

to them and the publisher said, "Yeah, we would love to run it." And it ended up -- At the Sentinel, Cathartic Comics ran and that was the first time it became syndicated because it was also running in Portland and a newspaper in Chicago. At the Sentinel, it ran, the cartoon strip ran on the editorial page. Once again, that that made me want

Rupert Kinnard:

to comment on about events that were happening in the Bay Area, especially things having to do with issues concerning people of color and sexual orientation. But when I got to S.F. Weekly, this is a general interest alternative newspaper, that's when the strip even opened up wider, but it was a cartoon strip in the classified section.

Rupert Kinnard:

I remember thinking that that was a little disappointing, but I didn't care because it was a weekly forum for me, and it was reaching the most people it had ever reached before. That was a realization of that goal to become our director of a weekly alternative newspaper. With the strips that ran in

Rupert Kinnard:

the Sentinel and the strips that ran in S.F. Weekly, I just was gathering more and more strips. Finally, I put together the strips and sent them to Alyson publications. And I got a rejection letter. I sent the mockup book as I envisioned it to a number of publishers -- Various reasons:

Rupert Kinnard:

we don't deal with cartoons, we're not ready, we did a cartoon book and it didn't do well, all of these. I was very disappointed. The very next year, one of the first writers conferences in the country was in San Francisco and lo and behold, I got a chance to meet the actual publisher of Alyson publication and he was a nice guy. I say, "I have

Rupert Kinnard:

this collection of cartoons and I really think there's a market for it." I gave him the copy and the conference came and went. He went back to Boston and I got a letter from him, saying, "Yes, we would love to publish your book." He chose the cartoon strips that he thought would work the most. That easily was one of the greatest highlights of my life. I think it was like

Rupert Kinnard:

two years before that book was published, that I met Scott Stapley. That was in a bar on Castro street. I'd gone to this bar because the novelty of going to this particular bar is that they shut everything down at eight o'clock and turned on the television into the delight of the patrons. They broadcasted Golden Girls.

Rupert Kinnard:

All these men in the bar would just stop everything and watch Golden Girls. When Golden Girls was over, a guy came up to me and I talked to him and I got kind of excited that I made a connection. Then he went to the restroom and didn't come back, never came back and I was a little disappointed, but then this young guy at the bar came over to me and asked me could he buy me a drink? I thought, oh, great. I only drank cranberry juice.

Rupert Kinnard:

So that was really cool, but the more he talked, the more I realized he was into materialistic things. I thought, okay, well, I'm sorry. I'm gonna move on, I told him. I went to the other side of the bar and there was two guys together talking with one another, but one of the guys kept looking in my direction. I'm wondering what's going on because they look like partners. Then one of the guys left

Rupert Kinnard:

and this red-haired guy was there and he was looking in my direction. Then these drag queens came into the bar and me and the guy were smiling at one another. Finally, I went over to him and said, "I want you to know I'm not laughing at them. I'm laughing with them because it takes quite a man to come into a bar like this dressed as drag queens." Then we started talking and that was Scott, and that was 31 years ago.

Rupert Kinnard:

I scored a maze.

Betsy Kalin:

Oh, that's true.

Rupert Kinnard:

I do score a partner and the way I looked at it was that, too hot, too cold, then Scott.

Betsy Kalin:

So the three little [inaudible].

Rupert Kinnard:

Yep. Yeah. That was the three accomplishments. I ended up being lured away from S.F. Week. It was a very, very hard decision, but there was

Rupert Kinnard:

this really slick queer journal called Out/Look that I really admired. They had an art director who was leaving and they wanted me to apply for that position. I got it, and I had to tell the publisher of S.F. Weekly that I was going to take this new job. It was one of the most touching events because

Rupert Kinnard:

he just teared up. He didn't want me to leave. I was in this place where I really wanted to spread my wings again. I got the job at Out/Look and they had me at three quarters time, like 30 hours a week. The first issue was published and they had to reduce my hours because they weren't getting enough money coming in. I had to up my freelance jobs.

Rupert Kinnard:

Then out of the blue, I got a call from Oakland Tribune, the Oakland Tribune. They had an arts editor who was like an art director was leaving and they knew of my work and they wanted to know if I would come in to try out for that position. That really appealed to me because it was in Oakland, which is where I live. These other jobs, I would always go from Oakland to San Francisco.

Rupert Kinnard:

I also knew that Oakland Tribune was African American owned, and it was like within walking distance of where I lived in Oakland. It was just so much about it that thrilled me. Then I had to tell the people at Out/Look, "Okay, my hours had been reduced so much. I really can't afford not to take this full-time job." I took it, and all of a sudden, it was almost like realizing this is a daily newspaper

Rupert Kinnard:

It wore me ragged. It was a really, really big challenge, but it was also the best paying job I had ever had because it was outside of the alternative news press, and there was a union. It was like a whole different world. But after eight months the publisher sold the newspaper to a company that had a chain of newspapers. A whole

Rupert Kinnard:

group of people were laid off because they already had counterparts to our position with the new people. I'd been together with Scott for two years. The first year he lived in San Francisco and would always visit me, we would go back and forth. The second year he got an apartment across the street from where I lived in Oakland, which was a story into itself, because I kind of felt the distance was pretty cool. All of a sudden, he was across the street.

Rupert Kinnard:

I'm like, oh, but it turned out really great. When he found out that I was being laid off from the Oakland Tribune -- We had visited Portland and he had visited with me a couple of times, I had been in the Bay Area for seven years, and I felt that one day I would probably move back to Portland and it was Scott who said, when I was being laid off, he said,

Rupert Kinnard:

"Let's just move to Portland." That's how I came back to Portland.

Betsy Kalin:

Great. Can you talk now about your accident and what happened?

Rupert Kinnard:

I was here in Portland in 1996 and my grandmother had passed away. My mother, at one point, had moved from Chicago

Rupert Kinnard:

to Marks Mississippi to be with her mom, and then her mom, my grandmother, passed away. I flew from Portland to Chicago and I rented a car and picked up my sisters who lived in Chicago and we drove to Mississippi. Marks Mississippi for my grandmother's funeral. The very next day after her funeral, I was traveling on a two-lane road from the motel I stayed at

Rupert Kinnard:

to go to my mom's place and I was on this road and this car was coming in my direction and it seemed like it was veering into my lane. So, I turned my steering wheel to try to avoid the car, and I went into a ditch and it was a freak accident because there was no damage to the car at all, no broken windshield, nothing. But when my hand went to touch my leg,

Rupert Kinnard:

my hand felt my leg, but my leg didn't feel my hands, and I thought, oh, oh, we have to get this fixed. Eventually, the paramedics came and they drove me to the nearest town which was Clarksdale. From Clarksdale, they realized it was a spinal cord injury. I was helicoptered from Clarksdale, Mississippi to Memphis. I had my surgery there.

Rupert Kinnard:

I properly contracted salmonella food poisoning at the hospital, which delayed my surgery. But eventually I complained to my insurance company that if I stayed at that hospital, that county hospital, any longer, everything would get worse. They ended up sending a Learjet and that took me and Scott back to Portland

Rupert Kinnard:

and only people on the jet was me and Scott, two paramedics and pilot and co-pilot.

Betsy Kalin:

Can you talk a little bit about how Scott flew out and then he came to the hospital and then kind of demanded things?

Rupert Kinnard:

Well, because my accident happened around the time of my grandmother's funeral,

Rupert Kinnard:

my parents had long divorced and my mom never remarried. She lived in Mississippi and my father came from Chicago to be at my grandma's funeral in support of my mom and the kids and all my sisters were there. I ended up at this hospital, the Med in Memphis. My family came to see me and

Rupert Kinnard:

they would just stay for a while and then go back. It was like an hour from the hospital in Memphis to my mom's place in Mississippi. The first couple of days it was just me and my family, and the salmonella food poisoning happened. Well, at the time of my accident, Scott was in California helping to celebrate his grandmother's 90th birthday.

Rupert Kinnard:

He didn't even know about my accident until he got back to Portland and I had left a message on our answering machine. He ended up coming to the hospital, flying to Memphis, like a day or two after he got the message. I was really in uncharted waters

Rupert Kinnard:

being in the hospital because I had never been in the hospital. I had never had a broken bone. Never had anything ever happened that would lead me to stay in a hospital. My mom had a career in nursing. I think she may have helped with a few things that she knew should be the case. But all I knew is things were just really complex and I was

Rupert Kinnard:

kind of miserable. I had on like a back brace and I think I knew that Scott was on his way, but when I was lying there in the hospital room and I think I was separated by patient with a partition, or maybe even more than one, and Scott came in and, of course, I never been so happy to see him because

Rupert Kinnard:

he's just such a great support, but I just never knew the extent of that support until he came. He basically came in and said, "I'm Scott Stapley, I'm Rupert's partner." He looked around and said, "I'll need a cot or something. You have to get a cot because I'll be sleeping next to him." At that time, my mother was there visiting my oldest sister and my father.

Rupert Kinnard:

They had met Scott before, and I think I knew that they liked Scott, but the relationship hadn't really developed. It's like what I always remember is that just to see my parents see Scott be as assertive as he was, was an amazing thing.

Rupert Kinnard:

Yeah, every time I think back on it, it was just one of the great moments of our relationship. I think they ended up moving me to a private room that had another bed in it. I don't know if that happened that night. My memory is a little fuzzy about it, but I pretty quickly got a private room.

Rupert Kinnard:

It was lifesaving that he was there because the staff, it was such a badly trained staff. It was like one of these play places where you really got the attitude that people hated their job. I'm in the hospital, I don't want to get from you that you hate your job. There were all kinds of complications

Rupert Kinnard:

from the food poisoning. Scott basically would say, "Okay, he really needs to be tended to here." He would be told by the staff, "Well, we can't do anything until the next group of staff arrive." Scott's like, "Where's your equipment closet?" And they go, "It's right down the hall." He goes to the equipment closet and he gets what he needs to kind of help me out. I mean,

Rupert Kinnard:

he was like a mother hen. I just remember being in awe of it. I really understood what it meant to have a health ally, someone advocating for you because he did it every step of the way.

Betsy Kalin:

When you were in Portland, how did your friends and community show their support for you?

Rupert Kinnard:

The bottom line with what I was going through in Memphis was that there were so many things for me to be concerned about in terms of my health and getting back to Portland, that was my goal. I, at least, want to be in my hometown. I never really thought about the severity of my injuries. I thought I need to go to rehab

Rupert Kinnard:

or something and really get a sense of what's going to happen, what can develop. My whole drive was to just get to Portland. We got to Portland, interestingly enough, my insurance was with Providence Healthcare at the same hospital where Scott worked. That was really cool, because I could see him pretty often.

Rupert Kinnard:

As soon as the plane landed in Hillsborough, Oregon I had friends on the runway When the plane landed, they were like up to the window on the plane, knocking on the plane and the owner of the plane said, "Could you tell your friends not to knock on the plane?" The immediacy of how

Rupert Kinnard:

my friends and community pulled together was evident in that event. They got me off the plane into an ambulance to the hospital. I was assigned my room, I'm in my room. I feel as if I can start to breathe a sigh of relief, because I'm away from Memphis. I'm in Portland. My home is just a few miles away.

Rupert Kinnard:

Flowers and cards and phone calls and things came in and there was almost like this sense of whoa what's happening. All of these people were just showing me all this affection and support and I became very, very emotional about it because I felt almost like it was too much and that I didn't deserve it. But the upshot of it in the end was that I never

Rupert Kinnard:

had any time to bemoan my situation. I don't know if I went through a second of bemoaning it because my whole idea once I got to Portland was I really need to do all I can to do all the right things so I can get home. Our friends just descended upon us in so many different ways. They got together, they did a fundraiser to raise money, to

Rupert Kinnard:

do renovations on our home, to enlarge doorways, to create a ramp. They came to me at one point saying we wanna do this and we wanna know if you would allow us to do it. And I said, "It's really hard for me to imagine being a part of a fundraiser for me. I just don't wanna be a part of it. You have my permit to do whatever you think could be helpful." They went like gangbusters.

Rupert Kinnard:

As I say, the upshot of it was that at one point, once I was home, I just broke down when I was home because of all the work that had been done, it was only then that I started realizing that all of that love and support totally distracted me from any negative feelings. I didn't have any sadness. I didn't have any anger. I didn't have any frustration

Rupert Kinnard:

because every time someone would do something, I would be so overwhelmed by their kindness. There was no place for those other emotions. At one point, I thought it seemed like there should have been a period of being sad or frustrated or angry or even a sense of loss for me, everything was, I need to do everything I can to get back up to speed.

Betsy Kalin:

Something that I thought was interesting too was your use of the term? I think it's less able.

Rupert Kinnard:

Yes.

Betsy Kalin:

I really love that. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Rupert Kinnard:

Well, first of all, I have always respected and have very much been into self-definition. If someone

Rupert Kinnard:

throws me in a group and they want to call me black or African American or queer or gay, all of these are labels and I will not get my blood pressure up if anyone refers to me in a way that I don't feel, I don't really care. But I will define myself

Rupert Kinnard:

and I'll let people know and they can take it from there, I can't make them. I just remember hearing the word disabled, and I kept thinking that just seems to reduce me to not being able to do things. I really felt like, no. It really did strike me, obviously at some point that the accident I had could have left me not as a paraplegic,

Rupert Kinnard:

but it could have left me quadriplegic. I was really aware all the work that I'm passionate about doing has to do with my hands and being on my computer and designing. I was very much able to do that. It was hard for me to think of myself as disabled, so I thought, no, I'm less able because acknowledging I was less able is

Rupert Kinnard:

to acknowledge I don't walk anymore. That was an ability I had that I truly appreciated. I reveled in it. I would run up and downstairs before my accident, I vividly remember it was like something that says really celebrate your mobility. I used to love to dance and run and all kinds of things. But once

Rupert Kinnard:

the accident happened very quickly, you have to realize, okay, this is it. At some point I have to realize that because in the beginning I kept thinking, there might be something that could be done that could bring back the sensation, but pretty soon after, at some point you realize, okay, we have to go from this. I've had at least

Rupert Kinnard:

one person say to me that considering myself less able wasn't to them an empowering term, and that they had issues with it. I think they were concerned about it because they knew that on occasion, I would be in positions of talking in front of people doing presentations and I would always refer to myself

Rupert Kinnard:

as less able. I think she thought that I was saying something that wasn't as uplifting as it should be. It's like for the longest time, when I would describe myself, if I was going to a place and I didn't know if it was wheelchair accessible, I would say, "Well, I'm confined to a wheelchair." And then other people who consider themselves disabled would say, "You shouldn't consider yourself confined to a wheelchair

Rupert Kinnard:

because your chair helps you get around." I still have issues with that. I still do feel like I'm confined, but within that being confined to the wheelchair is the freedom of the wheelchair, because without it, I can't go anywhere. There's all kinds of conflicts of thought and notions when it comes to how you're defining yourself, but I feel very comfortable defining myself so far as less able.

Betsy Kalin:

Great. Thank you. I definitely wanted to ask you about that. We don't have that much time left, but I did wanna talk about the first queer cartoonist conference and also your friendship with Alison Bechdel. Can you tell me a little bit about that?

Rupert Kinnard:

Oh, it's such an emotional story

Rupert Kinnard:

when it comes to my friendship with Alison and not only Alison Bechdel, but Howard Cruse and Jennifer Camper. I feel like I have this group of artists, queer cartoonists, that are so dear to my heart. I don't know where to begin. But I would say I met Alison -- And

Rupert Kinnard:

she and I had forgotten this because we are getting old. When I was working for the Sentinel, I ended up, for some reason -- I guess maybe I just left the Sentinel because I ended up writing or interviewing Alison for an interview to be published in the Bay Area Reporter. I'd say we didn't remember it because the last time I saw her

Rupert Kinnard:

was in New York for the premier of No Straight Lines. We were trying to remember when we first met one another and we thought it was at one of the first writers conferences because one of the outright, it was called Outright Queer Writers conference was held in Boston. First time I'd ever been to Boston and they had a panel on cartoonists, books.

Rupert Kinnard:

At one point, I was considered to be part of that panel because they didn't have any people of color on that panel, but there was a local white gay cartoonist who complained enough that he should be representing Boston, that they pushed me aside and they put him on that panel. But I was there as art director of the Sentinel at the time.

Rupert Kinnard:

But that's when I met, I felt like I was meeting Howard and Alison for the first time and we hit it off. It was just very cool. Next time I heard from Alison was during my accident. I had gone through my hospital stay and had returned to work

Rupert Kinnard:

at Just Out, the newspaper. One day, in the mail, I got a box and I looked at it and it was from Alison and this was at Just Out and it just brought a smile to my face, Alison sent me something. I mean her claim to fame at the time was strictly Dykes to Watch Out For, which I loved. I opened the box and there was a card and it basically said,

Rupert Kinnard:

"I heard about your accident. So sorry I wanted to send you a get-well card. But I thought sending a card around to different cartoonists to draw on would be cool, but it's too laborious so I came up with this idea. I hope you enjoy, get well." I put that card aside and then there was a panel, a square panel, I don't know five by five, six by six, and it was the drawing of a cartoonist

Rupert Kinnard:

I recognized, and it had two holes punched in and attached to a string. I pulled it up and there was another panel and another panel and another panel and those panels have the artwork of all these different queer cartoonists I was very familiar with. I'm pulling and pulling, and then I get to the center section that says something like, "We wish you well, we love you," and then a heart,

Rupert Kinnard:

and then the panels continued. With each panel I felt like there was this wash of recognition and "Oh, Howard sent one," "Oh, that's Donald." Of course, I just became very weepy. I couldn't believe that Alison had done such a thing. For me, it was one of those things that

Rupert Kinnard:

people do and they think, "Oh, this will be a good idea, I think he'll appreciate this." Then they get it together, I can imagine it's complicated, getting them in the mail through all these people and stringing them together, and then they send to you and then they kind of wait to hear that you got it, but they don't realize how it can just really

Rupert Kinnard:

get to the core of your being that you are so all well thought of. That's just kind of my ultimate feeling about my life is that I never want any moment to go by, that I don't realize all the ways I have been so fortunate.

Rupert Kinnard:

I mean, even the thing that irritates me about being in the wheelchair these days, even that gets overwhelmed by an interview like this, being in a documentary, going to a film festival, Lord knows question and answering answer sessions because I love them because they give me

Rupert Kinnard:

an opportunity to confront a question that I would never ask of myself. There's all of these ways you get to learn a little more about yourself -- But yeah, Alison sending me the card was an amazing experience. Then

Rupert Kinnard:

she published Fun Home. Howard had already published, Stuck Rubber Baby. I bought Howard's book and probably didn't read it for a couple of months because I was so overwhelmed by the artistry of it. I don't know how to describe it. It's hard to even read the words as an artist because I'm looking at his technique,

Rupert Kinnard:

his style blew me away. Then Alison puts out Fun Home. I had my memory of her at the writer's conference -- conferences, because I think there were two, we ran into one another and hung out a little bit. But I felt like I didn't know her, and then I get Fun Home, and I always

Rupert Kinnard:

felt like she just kind of had this distancing part of herself, but of course, she sent the card and I'm like thinking that's the sweetest thing she ever could have done. I read Fun Home, and once again, I'm blown over by her pure artistry, I'm reading this story and I'm like, I met this woman, I had no idea her background was like this. It was incredibly interesting

Rupert Kinnard:

to me, just riveting. I start sharing these books with friends, Fun Home and Stuck Rubber Baby. I have all these friends saying, "You should do that. You're a cartoonist, you should do it." I'm like, "No way could I do it." But I started thinking, what can I do along the lines of this that would really expand and explore my experiences

Rupert Kinnard:

as an African American queer gay cartoonist in a wheelchair? That's when I came up with the idea of the Life Capsule project, where it would tell my story and it would be through the voices of the Brown Bomber and Diva. I'm such a graphic designer and I have all of these mementos of my life. I just thought of this hodgepodge of things together,

Rupert Kinnard:

and I just started working on it and I really started working on it. At this point, it's been at least 25 years ago. I mean, I read the Life Capsule project right now, and I talk about it being a celebration of my 50th birthday. I am now 67. That has to be rewritten right away.

Rupert Kinnard:

What are you gonna do? But yeah, so the last time I saw Alison was at the premier of No Straight Lines in New York, and there was so much activity, so much going on that I really committed myself to telling Allison that I really wanted some one-on-one time with her. We got that. It was in the middle of a big gathering, but

Rupert Kinnard:

we were able to go off to the side and I had to really share with her the different things she's been responsible for, because the first queer comics conference in New York happened around the same time Fun Home appeared on Broadway. We were in New York and

Rupert Kinnard:

the part of the conference was that a group of people were going to get together, buy tickets and go to the theater to see Fun Home. I knew the tickets were gonna be expensive, so I dared to call Alison and say, me and Scott would really like to see Fun Home, we figured you might have an inside track. She said, "Oh, don't worry about it. I'll take care of it." I'm excited that I'm going to see the play

Rupert Kinnard:

on Broadway and I'm a musicals fan, so this is just great, even though I'm like, how are they turning Fun Home into a musical? We'll see. But there it is on Broadway. At one point, I see Alison, we hang out a little and I said, "So, what are Scott and I to expect? Will there be tickets at the box office," she says, "No, I got tickets for the three of us. We're gonna see it together." I'm like, oh,

Rupert Kinnard:

this is so cool. There we are in the theater and we're watching Alison's life as a musical unfold in front of us, and here she is, right with us. Even in New York for the premier of No Straight Lines, I wanted to reiterate to her that that was a really special moment, just that my relationship with her was very special.

Rupert Kinnard:

Our relationship was really special to me. She's done a few other things that I won't even go into, but when I got back from that, I ended up thinking, I seemed to remember that I interviewed Alison, but I didn't have any reference until finally I found out that the Bay Area Reporter had their archives online.

Rupert Kinnard:

I tried to figure out if I did interview her, when it would be. It didn't take very long for me to go into their archives, and there is this whole interview I did with Alison, which was clearly the first time I met her. I called her up and she basically said, "I didn't remember that interview." But then she was able to go to her journals. She remembered being in San Francisco and going to a party. She said,

Rupert Kinnard:

"I think you were at that party and you interviewed me." We went off to a corner of the apartment or something, and I did the interview and then the interview was actually published.

Betsy Kalin:

Well, that's great.

Rupert Kinnard:

The coolest thing about remembering that and actually reading it was that in the interview, Alison actually said, when she first started drawing,

Rupert Kinnard:

she only drew men and she had that same moment I had at one point, she thought, "Why am I drawing in men? I'm a Dyke." She ended up revealing that the first time I heard her, I thought the first time I was hearing her say that was in the film. I said, "That's so weird." Then it turns out she had told me that years ago in that interview.

Rupert Kinnard:

I think that may have been what made me relate to the fact that I was drawing all white people and became angry about it.

Betsy Kalin:

Rupert, this is the end of our interview. We went over a little bit, but I appreciate your time.

Rupert Kinnard:

This will be edited.

Betsy Kalin:

Yes, it will. Actually, I have a last four questions that are supposed to be kind of short and pithy,

Betsy Kalin:

and I always ask everyone the same four questions. I have those left to do, but yes, everything will be edited and there'll be a transcript. Astra can tell you more about what happens but let me just go into those four questions. If you could tell your 15-year-old self anything, what would it be?

Rupert Kinnard:

If I could tell my 15-year-old self anything, it would be: you are in store for some wonderful adventures. You are going to have friendships and connections with people. You are going to develop an appreciation for community that will fuel your life.

Rupert Kinnard:

You will be known for your embracing of community. And hold on, it is going to be a wild ride. You are going to trust your gut and you are going to make life-changing decisions and It's going to be glorious.

Betsy Kalin:

That's beautiful. I love that. This question we ask of everyone, but I think it's the most appropriate for you out of all the people that I have interviewed. It is: do you think there's such a thing as a queer superpower? [inaudible] What is it?

Rupert Kinnard:

Do I think there's a such thing as a queer superpower?

Rupert Kinnard:

I can't separate queer from the other parts of my identity. I don't really know how to describe my feeling about the question, even though I think I may have seen that question before and maybe even at the time I had an answer, but

Rupert Kinnard:

a queer superpower. I think if I had to come up with a queer superpower, it would be the ability to really be who you are after having grappled with the complexities of it.

Rupert Kinnard:

If, in the end, you just come out with this super power of being fabulous and an appreciation for other fabulous things. I don't necessarily think that that's even just a queer superpower, but I think RuPaul has a great queer superpower because I think his superpower is spreading fabulousness

Rupert Kinnard:

and I really think the basis of his doing that is his queerness.

Betsy Kalin:

Great. Thank you. Why is it important to you to tell your story?

Rupert Kinnard:

It's important for me to tell my story because I think of it as a possible

Rupert Kinnard:

roadmap in how one could view their own lives. It makes me think of my story is the Life Capsule project. Through the Life Capsule project, I explore all of these events, all of the arts, everything that kind of goes into

Rupert Kinnard:

making me the person I am today. I love the idea of encouraging people to take stock in all of the events, all of the decisions, all of the relationships, all of the adventures, all of the challenges and just evaluate everything. I'm fully aware, for certain people that might be really difficult because the conclusion could be

Rupert Kinnard:

heaven forbid that I don't like where I am and maybe the examination of one's life would involve, how did I get here? But I'm in a place at 67 years old where I'm very comfortable and very satisfied with the way I've lived my life. I have made some decisions and I've seen the fruit

Rupert Kinnard:

of those decisions. I think it's all worked out. I've given it to adventures. I've stood up to challenges. I think to share one's life is to make other people reflect on those parts of their lives. I could share with people what it was like to be in high school and go to Metro, and then they would think, oh, what was school like for me? What did it do for me?

Rupert Kinnard:

I think it's important to share my journey because I think it encourages people to share theirs. I think there's so much to be learned from how people handle their lives, how they have handled their lives.

Betsy Kalin:

Beautiful. Great. Thank you. The last question is OUTWORDS is the first national project to cap and share our history through in depth interviews.

Betsy Kalin:

What is the importance of a project like OUTWORDS and please use OUTWORDS in your answer?

Rupert Kinnard:

I think the OUTWORDS project is incredible because I didn't know about this program until I was contacted. I went to the website and once again,

Rupert Kinnard:

a little emotional, one of the first people I saw was Blackberri had been interviewed, and Blackberri just passed away like a week ago, not long at all. He's a friend of mine. He's someone that I've spent time with in the Bay Area. I met him here in Portland. First time I met was here in Portland when he was invited here for one of the Gay Pride celebrations.

Rupert Kinnard:

There is nothing more that can be done in terms of sharing stories than what you do when you gather oral histories. People can look at each of the individuals and get a sense of what they are, a musician, a queer musician named Blackberri, that sounds interesting, and then go into his existence, his journey.

Rupert Kinnard:

I can't even think of anything that's more thrilling than having this kind of resource for anyone who would be interested in it. Absolutely.

Betsy Kalin:

Thank you. Thank you. Rupert, I have like another whole page of questions, but we have to stop. I just wanna say personally that this has been such a pleasure for me. I've actually seen

Betsy Kalin:

No Straight Lines and loved the documentary. I was super excited when they told me that I would be interviewing you.

Rupert Kinnard:

Oh, cool. You had a precursor.

Betsy Kalin:

I did. I've always been interested in comics as well. So yeah, this is just really wonderful for me.

Rupert Kinnard:

Well, I have to say, it did go differently than I thought. I still think

Rupert Kinnard:

there's an opportunity at some point for me to actually talk about what I wanted to accomplish within the comic strip and the adventures that have been a part of having created those characters. It was really when I was at S.F. Weekly that I got mail, you know pro and con I got some of the oddest correspondence because of

Rupert Kinnard:

what I was presenting in my comic strip. I keep feeling as if I want there to be an avenue where I can really talk about that work, but I appreciate this so much because of the overview of my life. Each of those experiences have certainly added to who I am, good or bad.

Betsy Kalin:

Well, I just wanna thank you again.

Betsy Kalin:

Astra, it's okay to come back on.