SOCIAL JUSTICE

AFTER GEORGE FLOYD, an unarmed Black man, was killed by a white police officer in Minneapolis in 2020, and cities around the country erupted in protests and riots, murals memorializing Black lives and promoting civil rights sprouted up all over Chicago — like this one (left) at 1379 N. Wolcott Ave.

The artwork re-creates a 1968 photo from a memorial for the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis, Tennessee. The slogan is from a two-month strike by sanitation workers there to demand proper treatment. King spent his final days with the striking workers before his assassination.

AS BUSINESSES BOARDED up windows across the city amid massive demonstrations that followed George Floyd’s killing by police in 2020, “board-up” murals ended up on many storefronts promoting racial justice and harmony, and invoking the names of other Black men killed unjustly, including Ahmaud Arbery (right), who was gunned down while unarmed and jogging in Georgia, also in 2020.

SOME OF CHICAGO’S oldest and most meaningful murals — “The Wall of Respect” (above), created in 1967 at 43rd Street and Langley Avenue by famed Chicago artist William Walker and others, comes to mind — promoted many of the same ideals decades earlier.

That painting included dozens of portraits of iconic African American figures, from boxer Muhammad Ali to singer Aretha Franklin and jazz musician Miles Davis to poet Gwendolyn Brooks.

It served as a catalyst for murals in Chicago and around the country.

“Within a year or two, similar public murals were appearing in cities across the country, some even sharing the same name,” according to PBS. “A people’s art movement, grounded especially in the expression of minorities, had been sparked . ... The original Wall may have been destroyed in 1971 after a suspicious fire damaged the building, but it lives on in the spirit of murals and public art across the country.”

As the New York Times observed, “The Wall, now demolished, spurred a community movement of artists on the South Side — and others nationwide — to express the hopes and fears of African Americans through the mural art form.”

ANTHONY VAZQUEZ/SUN-TIMES PHOTOS A giant blue Black Lives Matter mural (above, left) was painted onto the pavement at 70th Street and Jeffery Boulevard last year, while another (above, right) done in Oak Park on Scoville Avenue near Lake Street was later vandalized to read “All Lives Matter.” Crews in the near west suburb were dispatched to restore the original wording.

TYLER LARIVIERE/SUN-TIMES This mural — also invoking BLM — was done in a Glenlake Avenue viaduct in Edgewater on the North Side.

BRIAN RICH/SUN-TIMES LEFT: This mural, unveiled in June during Pride month, was installed on the 3500 block of North Clark Street. Zeye One, a Mexican American tattoo artist who completed the mural, said the artwork was an ode to the city’s diversity and inspired by those who come together to celebrate their differences. Plans are for the painting to be moved to a LGBTQ community center.