Art that feeds kids the truth
Kenwood mural celebrates Chicago civil rights figure Rev. Jessie ‘Ma’ Houston
The Rev. Jessie “Ma” Houston, a Chicago minister and activist, spent decades working to improve the lives of people held in jail or prison.
It’s 40 years since her death, but her memory is kept alive through a mural across the street from the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, of which she was a founding member.
The 1994 piece titled “Feed Your Child the Truth” by Bernard Williams can be seen at the center of a Kenwood park named for Houston at 5001 S. Cottage Grove Ave.
It features a large, golden portrait of Houston surrounded by images celebrating African American history and culture. A portrait of a family at the center of the mural is flanked by two large African masks, people marching — with a nod to Rainbow PUSH — blues guitarist Johnny Shines and someone behind bars.
The mural’s title plays off the idea of sharing your culture with your children, Williams says, about “learning who you are and where you come from.”
“I think the work tries to encourage the love of culture and the love of the arts that come out of deep cultural roots, so it really is a celebration,” says Williams, 56.
The mural was done in partnership with Chicago Public Art Group, for which Williams is a board member.
Jon Pounds, the art group’s former executive director, calls Williams an “extraordinary artist.” He says the wall that now bears the mural was a magnet for graffiti and a source of tension in the neighborhood before Williams transformed it.
“I think that this mural really does represent the best of Chicago’s mural history as well as the best of Chicago Public Art Group’s history because it takes a site which was largely ignored or turned away from and has created an image which is compelling and desirable to look at,” Pounds says.
At the time of the mural’s creation, Williams was a few years out of graduate school at Northwestern University. He says his studies of master painters and traditional depictions of portraits and the human body helped inform “Feed Your Child the Truth.” But working with outdoor murals gave him a “liberating” understanding of space and of the concepts of “fragmentation and collage,” he says.
Williams’ restoration of the late Chicago muralist Calvin Jones’ work also was a major influence. With an emphasis on big, bright colors and patterns, and a mix of figuration and abstraction, Jones’ style was