Detroit Black Power Murals:

1968 - 1969

Welcome to an in-depth exploration of the Wall of Dignity, Wall of Pride, and Harriet Tubman (Let My People Go) murals that arose after Detroit's 1967 Uprising.

Introduction

This online exhibition explores a series of Black Power murals created in Detroit in the wake of the 1967 Detroit Rebellion. These murals, among the first of their kind in the United States, were created by the artists William Walker and Eugene Wade with the help of Detroit artists. They brought representation and feelings of pride to the Black communities of Detroit. The murals help us understand a time and place in which the city was reimagining itself while the political themes of the Black Power movement were showing up in art, especially public art.

In the year after Detroit’s Rebellion, the three major murals were created in neighborhoods where the event had unfurled: the Wall of Dignity (1968), the Wall of Pride (1968), and the Harriet Tubman Memorial Wall (Let My People Go) (1969). They were inspired by Walker and Eda’s work on the Wall of Respect mural in Chicago. Although the three Detroit murals were only visible for a few years and no longer exist, it’s important to recognize their history and how they positively impact local Detroit communities and identities.

Mural Network & Public History Information Map

What began as a preliminary collection exercise has evolved into an interactive map that documents the rich network of Black Power murals, historical sites, and research team projects in Detroit. The map highlights murals using yellow icons.

In addition to the murals, the map includes archival data from the Bentley Historical Library (BHL) and geolocated photographs that document the 1967 rebellion and related police-reported arson activity. These points— represented as orange icons on the map— capture the community violence and narratives highlighted by ESVID and The Ghetto Speaks. Inspired by the work done by those community newspapers, this map seeks to record social injustices, sites of activism, and cultural memory, along with urban changes. It serves as a central hub for ongoing research, site visits, and contributions from research team members, including institutions, archives, oral histories, interviews, and community spaces.

Written By David Vega

Map of Detroit with location of the murals and other relevant places. Credit: David N. Vega II

User Guide:

Users can filter icons via the left-hand tab (white box with arrow in upper left-hand corner of map window), which reveals a key to respective icons and layers.

Clicking icons on the map reveal photographs, archival materials, and more detailed information about each site, event, or mural.

Written By David Vega

The Murals

Each the three murals were sponsored by a different organization in Detroit, all working to serve the populations of neglected areas. For example, the Wall of Dignity mural on the northeast-facing wall of the Fairview Gardens building at Mack Avenue and Fairview Street was commissioned by the community organizer Frank Ditto on behalf of the East Side Voice of Independent Detroit. The Wall of Pride was sponsored by the clergy of Grace Episcopal Church. The final version of that mural was painted in 1968 on the front-facing wall of the church along Twelfth Street (now Rosa Parks Boulevard), in the corridor that had been ravaged during the Detroit Rebellion. The third mural, called the Harriet Tubman Memorial Wall (Let My People Go), was completed early in 1969. This mural was commissioned by Father Thomas Kerwin and Deacon Allen McNeely at St. Bernard of Clairvaux Catholic Church, a church located near the Wall of Dignity at Mack Avenue and Lillibridge Street on the East Side.

This project was created between 2024 and 2025 by students in a University of Michigan first year seminar called “Art and Black Power in Detroit: A Public History Project,” with the guidance of Professor Rebecca Zurier and Research Associates Olivia Butts and Irma Maribel Guzman. Throughout this process we have sought to educate the public on the history of each mural. The students wanted to evaluate the role of art in communities while also making knowledge on the topic more accessible as a whole.

Written by Marguerite Henry

While exploring this website, you will learn about several different topics related to the three original Black Power murals in Detroit, and the historic contexts that they were created in.

These topics are supplemented by personal interviews, historical newspaper articles, photographs, videos, and other relevant sources linked into each section. Together they convey the range of debate around each mural in its urban locale. Central topics include:

We would love to hear your memories of this time and place. Please feel free to submit any additional materials and questions to Professor Zurier and her team at DetroitBlackPowerMurals@umich.edu.