Black Lives Matter

When the world shut down for the Corona Virus pandemic, systemic racism leapt to the consciousness of America. As the world healed from our absence our hearts were crushed by the senseless deaths of Black Americans, again and again and again. Protests were held, at first in Minneapolis, and quickly spread across the globe. The protests were held peacefully during the day but as night fell the police brandished tear gas, rubber bullets, and riot batons. In countless videos we watched as police vehicles rammed into crowds of peaceful protesters.

This project was an attempt in adding to the historic names of Emmett Till, George Stinney, and Isaac Woodward Jr. as well as George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and many others were the most recent victims of police violence. Emmett Till was a 14 year old boy who was charged with offending a white woman and later lynched and brutally mutilated. George Stinney, accused of murdering two white girls and convicted in a well documented unfair trial, remains the youngest person ever executed in the electric chair. Isaac Woodard Jr., a decorated African-American World War II veteran,was attacked while still in uniform by South Carolina police as he was taking a bus home hours after being honorably discharged from the United States Army, .

ElijahMcClain and hundreds of others have met untimely ends at the hands of a police force that faced a new form of record - the cell phone. While we were painting on the barricades that were put up as a precaution against the daily protests new cases were reported daily. We didn’t have room for all the names. We did not have ROOM. Because we know there won’t be immediate change we left six blank spaces at the ends of the mural. We could have filled those spaces in the three day we were at work.