DC’s Black Lives Matter mural will be erased, but the idea can’t be
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Ken Makin Cultural commentator
If a Washington, D.C., mural was any indication, Black lives mattered for less than five years.
The same mayoral administration that commissioned a Black Lives Matter mural and plaza in June 2020, positioned just steps from the White House, called for their removal under pressure from the current presidential administration.
“The mural inspired millions of people and helped our city through a very painful period, but now we can’t afford to be distracted by meaningless congressional interference,” Mayor Muriel Bowser said in a statement on the social platform X.
Why We Wrote This
Under pressure from Congress and the Trump administration, Washington has begun to remove its Black Lives Matter mural. But the idea behind Black Lives Matter was never about murals, nor did it start with those words.
It felt like a concession speech. The decision is certainly just one small part of a larger trend. President Donald Trump and the Republican-led Congress are eager to dial back anything having to do with diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) or race consciousness. Even as, for instance, Columbia University in New York pushed back against the pro-Palestinian protests of its students, the Trump administration announced that it would cancel $400 million in grant funding.
But murals or morals were never the issue. To many, the mural seemed from the outset little more than a platitude in place of progress. What matters is the deeper message – that a mural to declare that Black lives matter was ever needed in the first place.
This has always been a challenge for lasting movements. How do people move past gestures of representation to something more concrete and powerful?
Some people might be tempted to compare the erasure of the Black Lives Matter mural and plaza in Washington to a metaphorical one across the United States. But such a comparison misses the mark.
Not only does it risk turning Black Lives Matter into a homogenous organization, but it is a disservice to the enduring power of the idea behind the movement.
An enduring truth
Even when the framers of the Constitution declared that enslaved people were three-fifths of a person, even when Supreme Court decisions like Dred Scott v. Sandford said that enslaved people were not citizens, Black Americans were five-fifths human and American. Their efforts to see that truth manifested is an indispensable link in American history. Neither the removal of a mural nor attempts to whitewash the past can change those facts.
The organization itself made that point forcefully in response to the news of the removal of the mural.
“First, they attacked critical race theory. Then, they banned books. Then DEI, now they’re erasing Black Lives Matter Plaza. Big mistake,” the organization wrote on X on March 5. “You can’t erase truth. Republicans hate that they have to walk past it. Hate that it reminds them of our power.”
“They can whitewash our murals, but they can’t erase our history,” the group added in a separate post. “Black Lives Matter is a permanent reminder of what they’re scared of and we’re not backing down.”
Black Lives Matter as an organization was founded in 2013 as a response to the acquittal of Trayvon Martin’s killer, George Zimmerman. It burned brightest after the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020. As outrage mounted over the deaths of Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery, BLM was able to use the groundwork it had established years prior to create an international movement.
Beyond society’s ebbs and flows
In that moment, more than murals and marches took place. Perhaps most dramatically, calls to defund the police became an essential part of the conversations. But corporate America, too, took steps. At the height of BLM in 2020, Minneapolis-based Target offered this statement:
We are a community in pain. That pain is not unique to the Twin Cities – it extends across America. The murder of George Floyd has unleashed the pent-up pain of years, as have the killings of Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor. We say their names and hold a too-long list of others in our hearts. As a Target team, we’ve huddled, we’ve consoled, we’ve witnessed horrific scenes similar to what’s playing out now and wept that not enough is changing. And as a team we’ve vowed to face pain with purpose.
Months later, the company followed up with initiatives to “advance racial equality.” Those initiatives have since been revoked by Target as part of an anti-DEI pushback.
But the movement was never about corporatism, what BLM officials did with funding, or whether the protests went too far. At its core, it was always about affirming the lives of Africans, both here and abroad. The fact that there’s still such an uproar about that affirmation is itself a strong indicator of where America stands on cherishing Black lives. It is an indictment.
