JAMAAL DEFENDS FARRAKHAN MURAL
W’chester Dem stirs outrage in saying anti-Jewish cleric is ‘part of Black history’ & artwork should stay in place ‘as is’
Rep. Jamaal Bowman defended a controversial mural that included a depiction of anti-Jewish firebrand Louis Farrakhan in a Westchester suburb last year — a move that’s sparked outrage among Jews as Bowman tries to hold onto his seat in a competitive Democratic primary.
Bowman’s support for Farrakhan’s inclusion in the mural, which has not been previously reported, came during a public access TV interview last year with Clifton Earl Abrams, a Greenburgh activist who advocated for the creation of the painting and has defended the inclusion of Farrakhan in it. The mural, located under an I-287 overpass, depicts a range of Black figures from modern American history, including Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali.
When Abrams steered their conversation to the depiction of Farrakhan, Bowman attempted to couch his remarks but ultimately said he supports the mural remaining “as is.”
“Regarding the minister, you know, he said many things that I fully disagree with, you know, period,” Bowman starts out. “But he is a part of Black history, you know? That’s a fact. And if the Greenburgh community — particularly that section of Greenburgh, you know — supports the mural, then the mural should be there as is.”
Bowman’s statements during that interview have led to a backlash from community leaders at a time he seeks to hold onto his House seat, which is now the target of a competitive primary challenge from Westchester County Executive George Latimer.
In a written statement sent to the Daily News, Bowman condemned Farrakhan for his “horrific, despicable antisemitic” rhetoric. The progressive Dem went on to say that the National Coalition Against Censorship and “many members of the Greenburgh community” believe the mural “should be contextualized, not removed.”
“I believe the local community living near the mural should have the power to decide how to move forward,” he said, adding that he authored and passed a congressional resolution condemning antisemitic conspiracy theories.
Critics who heard Bowman’s initial remarks aren’t pleased, though.
Barry Sugar, president of the Jewish Leadership Council, said the mural — and Bowman’s support of it — essentially amounts to “honoring a bigot, an antisemite.”
“America is facing a tremendous amount of challenges. To do something that’s more divisive doesn’t help anybody,” he said. “When you represent the people, you represent all the people. … We don’t need someone to give it a pass that’s a part of the government.”
Latimer declined to comment on the controversy, but he stands to potentially gain from it. He jumped into the race late last year after Bowman took heat for comments about Israel’s response to Hamas’s brutal Oct. 7 attacks against civilians. At the time, Bowman was calling for a ceasefire — an idea that has gained more widespread approval since then, from Latimer included — as Israel’s siege of Gaza drags on and the civilian death toll there continues to mount.
Supporting the public depiction of Farrakhan, which was funded through tax dollars, is an entirely
separate matter — but it has the potential to play on the same dissatisfaction some voters harbor toward Bowman for how he’s spoken about Israel.
Greenburgh Councilwoman Gina Jackson, who’s Black, called the mural controversy “unfortunate” and said the artwork in it was not approved by the Council. Paul Feiner, Greenburgh’s town supervisor who’s Jewish, also noted that the original proposal for the mural did not include a depiction of Farrakhan — or of Abrams, for that matter — but that both ended up appearing in the painting, anyway.
Feiner said the town government is still locked in mediation with the artist over his work’s ultimate fate.
“We still want to get it down,” Feiner said. “Farrakhan has said a lot of vicious things about the Jewish community.”
Over the years, Farrakhan, who leads the Nation of Islam, has referred to Jews as termites and satanic. He said in a 2018 speech that Jews “were responsible for all of this filth and degenerate behavior that Hollywood is putting out.” The Nation of Islam did not return messages requesting comment.
Abrams, the local activist who interviewed Bowman, has also had plenty to say about Jews.
In a 2020 Facebook post he labeled “YOU CAN’T HANDLE THIS TRUTH !!!! ,” Abrams shared a video called “Who and what is a jew?” in which the Afrocentric academic John Henrik Clarke complains about the “Jewish academic mafia.” In a 2023 post, he shared a video of Kanye West saying he “forgive[s]” the “Jewish media” for creating the narrative that he’s crazy.
When asked about the mural, Abrams, who’s Black, said it’s in a Black community, that “nobody is complaining in the neighborhood” and that Jews “don’t even come in this area.”
“Did Farrakhan murder anybody?” he asked. “I think it’s more good than bad, and I think the bad thing is that he said some stuff that Jewish people didn’t like, and they got so much power.”
Feiner, who’s Jewish, disagrees. He said he doesn’t think Bowman “really understands [how] the Farrakhan image is very hurtful to the Jewish community” and contended that the congressman hasn’t been very involved with the town since taking office in 2021.
The Rev. Michael Gerald, a pastor at the Shiloh Baptist Church in Tuckahoe who recently abandoned his own primary run for Bowman’s seat, said the rep’s decision to support Farrakhan’s inclusion in the mural reflects “naïveté or cruelty” — and is consistent with the socalled “Wall of Honor” Bowman curated during his time as a middle school principal.
That wall included depictions of former U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.), who like Bowman has accused Israel of committing genocide, and Assata Shakur, aka Joanne Chesimard, who escaped from prison to Cuba after being convicted of murdering a New Jersey cop.
“It is extremely unfortunate that Rep. Bowman again exercises his disregard for the community by advocating for the inclusion of a highly controversial figure in a painting,” said Gerald, who’s now backing Latimer. “Antisemitism or bigotry in any form should never be rewarded iconographically.”