RELOCATING HISTORY
Ray Mensour, the City of Windsor’s executive director of recreation and culture, displays one of 16 murals moved from the former Westside Foods in the city’s west end that are now being stored in municipal storage facility on McDougall Avenue.
The mystery of the missing murals was quickly solved when concerned citizens stepped up to say they’d removed the outdoor portraits of 16 black history figures from a closed west-end grocery store.
Bradley Jones is the president of the Emancipation Day Committee of Windsor and the son of former Ward 2 councillor Ron Jones.
Bradley and the store owner’s property manager carefully removed each four-by-eight-foot portrait Saturday from the west wall of Westside Foods and moved them to Science City inside the former Forster secondary school. Bradley said Facebook quickly blew up with questions about where the likeness of Henry Bibb, Mary Shadd, Fred Thomas, Alton Parker and the others had gone. “It’s my understanding folks took them down with good intentions,” said Ward 2 Coun. Fabio Costante, who was just sworn in Monday and quickly drawn into his first issue Tuesday. “I understand the anxiety. The building sold. It’s like what’s going on and these are a big part of our history.”
The portraits are actually city property. City workers moved the panels Wednesday to a municipal storage facility on McDougall Avenue. Ray Mensour, the city’s executive director of recreation and culture, said they were awaiting proper approvals to remove the murals.
“It was always our intention to preserve them as well,” Mensour said. “They ’re a big part of the community and we were going to take them down.”
Mensour said the city just got permission from the store’s owner Nov. 29 or 30. According to a local real estate broker, the building sold just three weeks ago. The grocery store had been closed since just after last Christmas. In the past, Bradley Jones had spoken with the previous owner Robert Hazelton about the murals and in particular the one of Walter Perry, who organized local Emancipation Day events. Hazelton said he had tried to find someone to take responsibility for all of them, as had Ron Jones. Bradley Jones said Hazelton was “adamant” that the murals be preserved. Uncertain what a new owner had in mind for the building, Hazelton asked Bradley and his property manager to remove them. That’s what happened Saturday. Ron Jones has now formed a small committee to work with Costante on a new location for the murals. “Obviously they’re very important to the community,” Ron said. “That’s good news that the city has them.”
Mensour said a report will go to council about their fate.
“I think we can all agree they should be featured in a prominent place in Sandwich,” Costante said. Learning that the murals were safe was a relief for Carolyn Dungy, a retired pastor with connections to three of the community leaders featured in the portraits. Dungy is a descendent of Abraham Shadd, an abolitionist, teacher and shoemaker, and his daughter Mary Shadd, a lawyer, teacher and the first black female newspaper publisher in North America. Dungy’s late husband Richard Dungy was descended from Herbert Dungy, a well-known reverend and spiritual leader. “I’ve been wondering what would happen to them,” Carolyn Dungy said. “I’ve taken many relatives to see those paintings on the side of the building.”
The original paintings were done right on the building ’s brick exterior in 1995. Thanks to a community fundraising effort backed by many of the portraits’ descendants, new panels were painted and mounted in 2008.