Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Mural depicts colorful call for equality
Six artists contributed to No Justice, No Peace work at College, Dickson
FAYETTEVILLE — A mural calling for equality for all was unveiled Saturday at the Fayetteville in Living Color event.
Six Northwest Arkansas artists contributed to painting the mural on the corner of College Avenue and Dickson Street, an idea conceived by Taliyah Brooks, 25, and Markus Ballengee, 22, both of Fayetteville, Brooks said.
Brooks, a professional track athlete, and Ballengee, a senior at the University of Arkansas, met as student athletes on the Razorbacks track and field team, she said. Both have white mothers and black fathers.
The two attended a protest in Fayetteville a few weeks ago, Brooks said, and made the decision to take their activism further by creating the No Justice, No Peace mural on the rear of a building owned by neighboring St. Paul’s Episcopal Church.
“I was just ready to actually take action and make a change and do that in a peaceful way — a way that would have a lasting and positive impact on my community,” Ballengee said.
Work on the 50-by-18-foot mural began Tuesday, Brooks said, adding she relied on the contributing artists to design and create the mural.
“We just gave them the idea of the event, what we wanted to do and we let them do their jobs, because we don’t know anything about art,” she said. “They wouldn’t come and tell us how to run track, we do not want to tell them how to do art.”
The mural captures the current climate of the country, Brooks said, and is filled with diverse images of people wearing masks because of the covid-19 pandemic as they gather with the common goal of creating a more equitable and just society for all.
Declarations of “Black Lives Matter” and “The children are watching” stand out in yellow against striking shades of green, orange, purple and red. Some people are depicted standing silently or holding signs, while others call for action with their arms raised in protest or pain.
The Black Lives Matter movement has been at the forefront of protests nationwide since May 25 when bystanders recorded the death of George Floyd, a 46-yearold black man who died during an arrest in Minneapolis after Derek Chauvin,
a white police officer, knelt on his neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds.
Jody Travis Thompson, a professional artist from Fayetteville, said he was grateful for the opportunity to help contribute to the project.
“I was just so happy to be able to show up as an ally,” Thompson said. “I’ve been thinking about how as a white artist I could contribute.”
Thompson said he hopes the mural stimulates discussions on equality within the Fayetteville community.
“That’s one of the powers of art — is to start a conversation,” he said. “To have this in our community where people are walking by, it will expand people’s view of what the Black Lives Matter movement is. It’s not saying that all lives don’t matter. It’s that this is where it started.”
Chastity Foster, 29, from Wichita Falls, Texas, attended the event Saturday. Foster is black and said the mural is a great way to help create a fair society for her children to grow up in.
“Black lives matter, trans lives matter – you have a lot different things up there that should be inspiring to everybody to come together as one,” she said. “I hope that everybody looks and really just pays more attention to it.”
The event also featured food trucks, classes, remarks from Mayor Lioneld Jordan, a raffle and voter registration, Brooks said, noting all proceeds from the event will be donated to the Northwest Arkansas African American Heritage Association.
The voter registration was particularly valuable for helping to create a more equitable society in the future, she said.
“We wanted to let people know different things that you could do to move towards equal rights,” Brooks said. “Part of that is voting.”
The mural will stand as a reminder to the community to keep working toward equality for all following the event, Ballengee said.
“We’re not done, and we have to continually push and make change,” he said. “It’s not going to happen unless we’re all united and push towards that – no matter your ethnicity or background.”