'We were in awe': New mural remembers Carver students who witnessed voting rights march

Montgomery school board member Claudia Mitchell remembers the day that Martin Luther King Jr. led what seemed like thousands of activists in a march past her school.

The date was March 24, 1965, and the group was stopping for the night at City of St. Jude across the street. The next day, the civil rights march would head for the steps of the state Capitol building, the culmination of a five-day demonstration for voting rights that began 50 miles back in Selma.

Mitchell was only a seventh grader at the time, but today, nearly 59 years later, she can conjure the image in her mind as clearly as ever. Standing with her friends at the front of a crowd before George Washington Carver High, school books in hand, she knew that history was being written before her eyes.

“Watching the marchers come down Fairview, we were in awe,” she said.“It gave us so much pride on that day to see them coming and marching on our behalf. That’s why we knew that we had to try our very best because we did not want that march to be in vain.”

It just so happened that a photographer from Ebony magazine was there to witness the amazement of Mitchell and her classmates that day. The photographer captured the image, and it was published on page 84 of Ebony’s May 1965 edition. Mitchell noted that her face did not actually make the final shot, but her arm did.

Now, that image and its story will be forever memorialized in the halls of Carver.

On Monday, in celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a group of volunteers from paint company PPG gathered inside of the high school to paint a colorful mural that incorporates part of the Ebony photo.

Along with Principal Gary Hall and board member Cassandra Brown, Mitchell visited Carver on Monday to watch the mural go up. As soon as she saw the image’s outline sketched onto the wall, she began identifying each of her friends in the picture by name.

“For this mural to be here, it’s just history so that the younger generation will never forget the sacrifice that was made by the generations before.”

Montgomery's art nonprofit The King's Canvas organized efforts for the project. Founder and former Community Hero Kevin King connected with PPG and took charge of the details — everything from selecting the mural's artist to picking up supplies and prepping the space for volunteers.

The mural is part of PPG’s Colorful Communities program, which beautifies community spaces around the world as a service initiative. PPG has spent over $10 million to complete more than 500 similar projects since Colorful Communities began in 2015.

“We work with paint, so we want to spread our colors around,” volunteer Malinda Williams said. “When you walk into a school, pictures like this just capture the students and make them feel good. We just try to put out cheer in the schools.”

For MLK Day, initiative leaders wanted to complete a project in a place with ties to the civil rights leader, and thanks to one Montgomery volunteer, they found Carver.

While around a dozen people traveled from across the South to help complete the mural in a paint-by-numbers process, the person who created the artwork is Montgomery resident Tori Jackson.

Born and raised in Prattville, Jackson considers herself a lifelong Alabama artist. She often works in oil paints and incorporates themes from her Black and Native American heritage.

When Jackson was first approached about the Carver mural, the base inspiration was the Ebony magazine photo. She looked at the image of young Black students cheering on a historic civil rights march and decided the entire mural would show what happened from that moment on.

The painting includes imagery of marchers, the Capitol building, a eucalyptus plant to represent protection, a yellowhammer bird and a little girl with a look of peaceful resolution on her face.

“I wanted it to tell a story,” Jackson said. “I'm hoping that it turns out the way I see it in my head. I'm known to take like two to three years on projects, so murals are always interesting for me because I'm on a time crunch.”

The PPG volunteers completed most of the mural under Jackson’s direction on Monday, but she plans to return in a few days to paint in the final details and shading.

Once everything is complete, PPG and MPS plan to share photos of the mural with the community. Mitchell hopes that some of her former classmates, especially those featured in the mural, will come see it in person.

“We can share our history,” she said.

Hadley Hitson covers children's health, education and welfare for the Montgomery Advertiser. She can be reached at hhitson@gannett.com. To support her work, subscribe to the Advertiser.

This article originally appeared on Montgomery Advertiser: New Carver High mural recognizes school's place on civil rights trail