On this episode of Syracuse Side Hustles, we talk with London Ladd. A graduate of Syracuse University, he works as a parking attendant for the university and as ramp agent Delta Airlines, but devotes his spare time to his career as a children’s book illustrator. His books demonstrate an interest in using his artwork to tell the stories of famous and not-so-famous African Americans — such as Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King Jr., Oprah Winfrey, and Lilly Ann Granderson, an enslaved woman and literacy champion born in 1821. Ladd speaks about the role family and identity have played in his evolution as an artist and about the challenges on taking on projects for economic gain.

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