The Wall Speaks: Black Muralism in the American City

In 1967, on the South Side of Chicago, a group of artists painted the Wall of Respect — a mural of Black heroes on the side of an ordinary building, unsanctioned and unforgettable. It made the wall a witness, and it made the city a gallery no one could gatekeep.

That impulse still travels the country, gable end to overpass, from Philadelphia to New Orleans. Black muralism insists that art belongs to the block that raised it — that the most public canvas is also the most honest.