Hartford’s Black Lives Matter street mural an enduring symbol of community’s commitment to the struggle
Artists, activists and Hartford officials joined together to celebrate a lasting memorial to the Black Lives Matter movement Sunday, a symbol of a struggle for equity they agree must last beyond this moment. The 16 letters spelling out Black Lives Matter stretch across Trinity Street from the Civil War Memorial Arch to the corner of Elm. Each with the same outline, but with different stories, colors, from different artists told within.
“This mural says powerfully and unequivocally that Black lives matter,” Mayor Luke Bronin said Sunday, in the ceremony to reveal the new mural. “And that all lives cannot and will not matter until Black lives do. This mural says those words. Our city and our state must embrace those words. This the power of Hartford, 16 letters, each coming from a different artists’ mind, imagination, heart, pain, hope, beauty, spirit together in a mosaic that is so much more beautiful and so much more powerful than it could have been if it just represented the vision of one of us.”
The block will remain closed to vehicular traffic at least through August.
Sacha Kelly, a math teacher at the Academy of Science and Innovation in New Britain, operated by the Capitol Region Education Council, was out at 7:30 a.m. Sunday with Khaiin Self-Suffice, putting the finishing touches, adding names, to the ‘E,’ the second to last letter.
“It was kind of like math in real life,” said Kelly, who stenciled the outlines of the letters. “Three of us, Nigel [White], myself and B-boy Pop Tart [Taris Clemons], we came and did all the measurements. We stenciled everything and I filled in the majority of the style of the letters.”
Each of the 16 letters is an individual piece of art, assigned to its own artist. LaShawn Robinson of BLM 860 and Queen Sisters, is a lead organizer of the project along with Hartford resident Levey Kardulis.
“It’s a power move for our city,” said Robinson, who painted the B, “that they allowed us to art our streets, and the youth were able to help us and we had so many artists come out that are from here. Each letter tells a story; that’s what I love about it. I didn’t want it to be all yellow. I wanted everybody to have a piece of their story told. That’s what art is.”
The work took several days, and continued Sunday morning up to the 1 p.m. revealing, which drew a couple of hundred to Bushnell Park.
“You see Sacha Kelly, she’s a painter and she’s a math teacher, that’s why you see her style is precise, words, lots of tiny little things,” Khaiin said. “You’ve got some that are bigger, more abstract, and then me, I do spoken word poetry, rap, that’s my specialty, and Dre, Andre Rochester, he primarily does canvasses, acrylics, T-shirts, galleries. … I don’t know anyone here who doesn’t work with youth. All of these artists are people who work on their craft, but they’re also a teacher, a social worker, in some way a guest artist in our schools.”
Murals like this are being painted on streets in cities across the country, part of the response to the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May. Hartford treasurer Adam M. Cloud, after seeing the words in Washington, D.C., made the suggestion to Bronin.
The artists behind Hartford’s mural hope it spurs healthy conversation.
“I hope that people will come down and enjoy our art,” Robinson said, “and also create changes in their hearts. We’ve been faced with some angry protesters who came down here in the beginning and yelled at our youth that were working on some of the art. I hope this will bring a little bit of change and make people happy to see different stories being told on our street and maybe it will start changing the conversation.”
The City of Hartford donated supplies, the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving provided stipends to the artists, according to Janice Castle, Hartford’s director of community engagement.
“This is a moment and an opportunity for us to seize,” said TJ Clarke II, majority leader of the city council. “They represent various voices in our community, but the time is now to act.”
Dom Amore can be reached at damore@courant.com.
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