CINCINNATI — For the third time in as many years, local artists shut down the street in front of the Cincinnati City Hall to retouch one of the city’s most controversial mural installations.
Like many across the country, Cincinnati’s street mural went up in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder and the national conversation around systemic racism happening at the time. Three years later, the woman behind the effort, Alandes Powell, is doing what she can to keep it alive into perpetuity.
It started as a dream. Powell was at City Hall with her son and envisioned the message as a way to make something beautiful during a tense and divisive time for the city.
Thousands took part in protests that lasted more than 10 consecutive days. Most protests and marches were peaceful, but some nights ended in vandalism, looting and arrests.
“I wanted the artwork to represent what we wanted and kind of to calm people and help them understand that Black Lives Matter is a prayer,” Powell said.
The Urban League raised $100,000 to fund the effort, the city council gave their OK and Powell gathered a team of artists to bring the piece to life through her new nonprofit Black Art Speaks.
Artists installed the mural in a matter of days. (Spectrum News 1/Michelle Alfini)
Each artist was assigned a letter to illustrate an issue impacting Black lives such as education, violence or health care. Annie Ruth’s letter was about depicting Black men as fathers, intellectuals or caretakers.
“It’s how we want the world to see Black men,” she said. “Not as criminals or thugs.”
For Powell, the location of the mural was just as important as its message. She wanted it to serve as a constant reminder to city employees and elected officials that there are thousands of Black voters in Cincinnati and they have high expectations.
“We actually put them in office,” Powell said.
Ruth was the artist tasked with painting the “R.” (Spectrum News 1/Michelle Alfini)
Cincinnati’s mural is one of many that cropped up across the country in 2020, but three years later, many have faded, faced vandalism or been paved over.
Cincinnati’s, which sits on a street open to traffic, has coped with two of the three, and Powell said she’s known from the beginning it will be paved over in 2025.
Yet, she said it means something that the city has helped keep the mural alive, whether through closing down the street for touchups or dedicating thousands in city funds to help cover restoration costs.
“I think it means that they heard our message and didn’t think that it was just a moment in time,” Powell said.
She said the city has committed to allowing Black Art Speaks to repaint the mural after the street is paved over, but beyond the symbolism of the installation, Powell said she wants to the message of the piece to sink in at City Hall.
“We want to live in safety, we want to make sure gun violence doesn’t plague us, we want to make sure our education system is used to educate,” she said. “Those things don’t go away even if the art goes away.”
