top of page

mural Images

Panel 1 and 2: Africa 

 

Africa, The wealthiest person in recorded history was Emperor Mansa Musa of Mali West Africa who ruled from 1312 C.E. to 1337. His combined wealth was estimated to be over $400 Billion dollars by today's monetary standard. Hatshepsut was considered the most powerful female Pharaoh in ancient Egypt who came to the thrown in 1478 BC.

 

Panel 3: The Black Madonna and Child of Poland 1340

 

The Black Madonna of Częstochowa, also known as Our Lady of Częstochowa, is a venerated icon of the Blessed Virgin Mary housed at the Jasna Góra Monastery in Częstochowa, Poland. Several Pontiffs have recognized the venerated icon, beginning with Pope Clement XI, who issued a Canonical Coronation to the image on 8 September 1717 via the Vatican Chapter.

 

Panel 4, 5 and 6: Middle Passage

Middle Passage, Africans kidnapped into slavery and Escaped through abolitionists and the underground railroad Harriet Tubman (March 1822 – March 10, 1913) Abolitionist, political activist, army scout and spy for the Union Army activist for women's suffrage.

Meet The Artist

Anna Arnold

Artist Anna Arnold.png

Panels 9 and 10: Cleveland’s Greats

 

Carl B. Stokes (June 21, 1927 – April 3, 1996) became the first African American mayor of a major U.S. city when he was elected mayor of Cleveland in November 1967. He later became a news anchorman, judge and a United States Ambassador.

 

Louis Stokes (February 23, 1925 – August 18, 2015) was an American attorney, civil rights pioneer and political trailblazer. He served 15 terms in the United States House of Representatives as the first African American congressman elected in the state of Ohio. He was a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus. In 1968 he argued the landmark case stop and frisk known as Terry vs Ohio before the United States Supreme Court.

 

George L. Forbes (born April 4, 1931) is an American politician of the Democratic Party. From 1974 to 1989, Forbes served as president of Cleveland City Council. Forbes laid the legislative groundwork for Mayor George V. Voinovich, which took the city of Cleveland out of bankruptcy and put it on the path to becoming one of America’s All-American Cities on 5 different occasions. He is the former President of the Cleveland NAACP and is semi-retired from practicing law.

 

Arnold R. Pinkney (January 6, 1930 – January 13, 2014) a successful black entrepreneur, political strategist, philanthropist, pioneer in the area of representing minority sports figures. He managed Jesse Jackson’s 1984 presidential campaign, was the political consultant who helped put Louis Stokes in Congress and was a well-known political figure whose name was often mentioned in the same breath as brothers Carl and Louis Stokes and Mayor Frank Jackson.

 

Fannie Lewis (June 6, 1926 – August 11, 2008) was the Ward 7 representative for Cleveland City Council, an area that included the city’s Hough neighborhood,, for almost 30 years. Lewis, a Democrat, earned a reputation for her tireless efforts to improve Hough I the wake of the 1966 riots, including encouraging the construction of Lexington Village town houses, In Hough. She was inducted into the Ohio Woman Hall of Fame in Columbus in 1996.

 

Rev. Odie M. Hoover, Jr. (September 21, 1921 – November 7, 1973) Minster and social justice activist. Pastor of Olivet Institutional Baptist Church in Cleveland for 21 years. While pastor he increased the church’s membership from 500 to over 5,000. Hoover was a nationally-known singer and longtime supporter of Black political activity and civil rights programs. Also, he was a consistent fund-raiser for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

Stephanie Tubbs Jones (September 10, 1949 – August 20, 2008) was the first African American woman from Ohio elected to the United States House of Representative and served the state’s eleventh district for nearly ten years. Prior to her election to Congress, Tubbs Jones was the first African American elected as Cuyahoga County Prosecutor.

 

Carole F. Hoover is President and CEO of Hoover Milstein, a partnership formed in 1999, which provides financial services and real estate development. Carole became the first African American female to serve as President and CEO of the Greater Cleveland Growth Association. Ms. Hoover is also Chairman and Chief of HWH, LLC and a Director of the Cleveland Clinic Foundation since 2007. Also, she served on the leadership team of SCLC during the tenure of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Steven A. Minter ( October 23, 1938 – September 19, 2019) was the first African American to lead the Cleveland Foundation, the Cuyahoga County Welfare Department, Massachusetts’ public welfare commission and what’s now the American Public Health Services Association. He was the founding undersecretary of the U. S. Department of Education, appointed by former President James Earl Carter.

 

Rev. Dr. Otis Moss, Jr. (February 26, 1935) is an American pastor, theologian, public speaker, author, and social justice activist. Rev. Moss is pastor emeritus of Olivet Institution Baptist Church and well known for his involvement in the Civil Rights Movement and his personal friendship with both Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rev. Martin Luther King, Sr.

 

Booker T. Tall (December 12, 1928 – February 13, 1994) had a varied career as an educator, businessman, historian, author, and politician, but he is best known for a lifetime of work to enhance and honor the positive achievements of African Americans. He established the first black studies program at a community college in the state of Ohio. He served as Director of Cleveland Minority Enterprise Center and Cleveland’s Equal Employment Opportunity Center. He established the African American Cultural Garden and a founding member of the African American Archives Auxiliary of the Western Reserve Historical Society.

 

Icabod Flewellen (July 6, 1016 – July 20, 2001) student, curator, activist, citizen, and community servant was a longtime resident of Hough and best known for hs extensive collections of African American historical artifacts and memorabilia. Flewellen’s Afro-American Cultural & Historical Society Museum in Cleveland was one of the first of its kind in United States History earning him the title of the father of black history museums in America.

 

Dr. Guion S. Bluford, Jr. (born November 22, 1942) is an American aerospace engineer, retired U.S. Air Force Colonel and fighter pilot and former NASA astronaut, and the second person of African descent to into space and the first African American in space.

Panel 6 and 7: The Civil Rights Movement

 

Frederick Douglass (February 1818 – February 20, 1895) was an American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman.

 

Vernon Johns (April 22, 1892 – June 11, 1965) an American minister, pioneer in the civil rights movement.

 

Martin Luther King Jr. (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American Christian minister and activist who became the most visible spokesperson and leader in the civil rights movement until his assassination in 1968.

 

Coretta Scott King (April 27, 1927 – January 30, 2006) was a singer, American author, activist, civil rights leader, and the wife of Martin Luther King Jr.

 

Malcolm X (May 19, 1925 – February 21, 1965) was an American Muslim minister and human rights activist who was a popular figure during the civil rights movement.

 

Panel 8: The Literary Giants

 

Toni Morrison (February 18, 1931 – August 5, 2019), was an American novelist, essayist, book editor, and college professor.

 

Alice Walker (February 9, 1944) is an American novelist, short story writer, poet, and social activist.

 

Maya Angelou (April 4, 1928 – May 28, 2014) was an American poet, memoirist, and civil rights activist.

 

James Baldwin (August 2, 1924 – December 1, 1987) was an American novelist, playwright, essayist, poet and activist.

Panel 11: The Innovators

 

Benjamin Banneker (November 9, 1731 – October 19, 1806) was a free AfricanAmerican almanac author, surveyor, landowner and farmer who had knowledge of mathematics and natural history. Born in Baltimore County, Maryland, to a free African-American woman and a former slave, Banneker had little or no formal education and was largely self-taught. He became known for assisting Major Andrew Ellicott in a survey that established the original borders of the District of Columbia, the federal capital district of the United States.

 

Alice H. Parker (1895 – 1920’s?) was an African-American woman born in Morristown, New Jersey. Inventor famous for her patented system of central heating using natural gas. In the 1920s using natural gas to power a heating furnace was a revolutionary idea that conserved energy and paved the way for the central heating systems we all have in our homes today.

 

Charles Richard Drew (June 3, 1904 – April 1, 1950) was an American surgeon and medical researcher. He researched in the field of blood transfusions, developing improved techniques for blood storage, and applied his expert knowledge to developing large-scale blood bank early in World War II.

 

Lewis Howard Latimer (September 4, 1848 – December 11, 1928) was an American inventor and patent draftsman for the patents of the incandescent light bulb, among other inventions.

 

George Washington Carver (1860s – January 5, 1943) was an American agricultural scientist and inventor who promoted alternative crops to cotton and methods to prevent soil depletion. He was the most prominent black scientist of the early 20th century.

 

Marie Van Brittan Brown (October 30, 1922 – February 2, 1999 was the inventor of the home security system in 1966, along with her husband Albert Brown. In the same year they jointly applied for a patent, which was granted in 1969. Brown was born in Jamaica, Queens, New York; she died there at the age of 76.

 

Jesse Eugene Russell (born April 26, 1948) is an American inventor. He was trained as an electrical engineer at Tennessee State University and Stanford University, and worked in the field of wireless communication for over 20 years. He holds patents and continues to invent and innovate in the emerging area of next generation broadband wireless networks, technologies and services.

 

Dr. Shirley Jackson, (August 5, 1946) is an American physicist. She received her Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1973, becoming the first African-American woman to earn a doctorate at MIT in nuclear physics. Currently, Jackson is the 18th president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y. In addition to her academic achievements, she also has an impressive list of inventions to her credit. Her experiments with theoretical physics are responsible for many telecommunications developments, including the touch-tone telephone, the portable fax, caller ID, call waiting and the fiber-optic.

 

Madam C.J. Walker (born Sarah Breedlove; December 23, 1867 – May 25, 1919) was an American entrepreneur, philanthropist, and political and social activist. She is recorded as the first female self-made millionaire in America.

 

Garrett Augustus Morgan, Sr. (March 4, 1877 – July 27, 1963) was an African-American inventor, businessman, and community leader. His most notable inventions were a three-position traffic signal and a smoke hood (a predecessor to the gas mask notably used in a 1916 tunnel construction disaster rescue.[2] Morgan also discovered and developed a chemical hairprocessing and straightening solution. He created a successful company based on his hair product inventions along with a complete line of hair-care products and became involved in the civic and political advancement of African-Americans, especially in and around Cleveland, Ohio.

Public art adds enormous value to the cultural, aesthetic and economic vitality of a community. It is now a well-accepted principle of urban design that public art contributes to a community's identity, fosters community pride and a sense of belonging, and enhances the quality of life for its residents and visitors.

bottom of page