Emaciated, stricken with stage 4 pancreatic most cancers, Rep. John Lewis, civil rights icon, wanted to see it for himself. Steadied by a cane, carrying a purple and black masks to protect in opposition to the COVID-19 pandemic raging throughout the nation, the congressman from Georgia walked by Black Lives Matter Plaza in downtown Washington, D.C.
Lewis posed for footage with Mayor Muriel Bowser, who commissioned the mural as an act of defiance. With arms folded, the 2 leaders stood on sixteenth St. NW, the phrases BLACK LIVES MATTER stretched on the pavement behind them. The intense yellow letters, two metropolis blocks lengthy, giant sufficient to learn from house, gleamed like a yellow brick highway to the White Home — then occupied by President Donald Trump.
Lewis’s June 7, 2020, go to got here simply days after protests over the homicide of George Floyd rocked the nation. The mural, painted on June 5, 2020, was a defiant response to the police killing of Floyd — and a reminder to town that the Trump administration ordered legislation enforcement to assault native protesters in that block. Lewis died 40 days after his go to.
On Monday, practically 5 years later, on Bowser’s orders, metropolis employees started dismantling the mural. The plaza turned one other sufferer of the continuing whitelash in opposition to the election of President Barack Obama, the Black Lives Matter motion, and certainly, the very existence of Black of us in these United States.
“First, they attacked crucial race idea. Then, they banned books. Then DEI, Now they’re erasing Black Lives Matter Plaza,” the Black Lives Matter International Community Basis posted on X on Monday.
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“Huge mistake. You possibly can’t erase reality,” the group wrote. “Republicans hate that they must stroll previous it. Hate that it reminds them of our energy.”
However at a time when the scourge of police killing Black individuals hasn’t stopped, when legislation enforcement budgets are on the rise — and when Trump, returned to energy 5 years later, pardoned two D.C. cops imprisoned for killing a Black man, then making an attempt to cowl it up — it’s an open query whether or not the mural had any energy in any respect.
“We Can’t Afford to Be Distracted”
When she and Lewis visited the plaza in 2020, Bowser posted the images of herself and the congressman on the plaza with an inspiring message: “We’ve walked this path earlier than, and can proceed marching on, hand in hand, elevating our voices, till justice and peace prevail.”
Not lengthy after Trump returned to energy in January, nonetheless, Republicans — emboldened by management of the White Home and each homes of Congress — took intention on the mural and put Bowser in a squeeze. Rep. Andrew Clyde, a Georgia Republican, launched laws that was extra like an ultimatum: do away with Black Lives Matter Plaza or lose tens of millions in federal funding.
Clyde might make that demand as a consequence of what’s often known as “house rule,” a quirk in D.C. authorities. Washington, D.C. isn’t a state, however it’s allowed to control itself — up to some extent. As a result of it’s thought-about a federal jurisdiction, Congress will get the final phrase on metropolis points if it chooses to and should approve D.C.’s price range yearly.
With out statehood, Washington may be topic to the whims of lawmakers, who typically use their energy as a cudgel to punish town if it does issues they don’t like.
And Bowser acquired Clyde’s message, loud and clear.
The mural helped town by a tough interval, “however now we will’t afford to be distracted by meaningless congressional interference,” Bowser wrote on X. “The devastating impacts of the federal job cuts should be our primary concern.”
Intimidation or Practicality?
Artist Keyonna Jones, a D.C. resident who labored on the mural, understood Bowser’s alternative.
“We both combat for this, or we lose funding,” Jones instructed WTOP. “Folks have misplaced their houses, individuals have misplaced their jobs, and we have to preserve no matter we will” to protect town.
Nonetheless, it was a 180 for Bowser. In a 2020 essay for The Washington Put up, she vowed Trump — who needed Gen. Mark Milley, then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Workers, to have troops shoot unarmed protesters — wouldn’t intimidate town.
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The president “turned the most recent to trample our rights as U.S. residents,” she wrote. “He’s not the primary and, sadly, he’ll seemingly not be the final. However by standing collectively, we pushed again extra forcefully than we ever have earlier than.”
“Performative” Justice
Not everybody was satisfied by Bowser’s bravado.
Calling the Black Lives Matter mural “performative,” the D.C. chapter of Black Lives Matter accused Bowser of political grandstanding. They identified that her administration failed to handle systemic points that led to protests within the first place, like police violence and housing inequality.
A splashy mural “is meant to mirror the worth of Black lives,” Brandi Thompson Summers, a College of California-Berkeley professor and former D.C. resident, instructed NPR in August 2020. “However you don’t truly must make town liveable for Black individuals.”
Certainly, when John Lewis — a survivor of the 1965 Bloody Sunday civil rights protest in Selma, Alabama — visited the mural, activists had already expanded its message to incorporate DEFUND THE POLICE. The phrases remained on the pavement till August 2020, when Verizon employees paved it over as a part of a development undertaking.
The subsequent 12 months, as Republicans slammed her over the “defund the police” message, Bowser elevated the D.C. police price range. Critics pointed to the transfer as proof that the mayor’s dedication to racial justice was merely symbolic.
Cop Cities
Simply two years after Floyd’s loss of life, an ABC Information evaluation of 109 metropolis and county police budgets discovered 8 in 10 of them spent extra on legislation enforcement than they did in 2019. In 2024, researchers from Oxford College discovered “no proof that BLM protests led to police defunding.” In truth, “in cities with giant Republican vote shares, protest is related to vital will increase in police budgets,” they wrote.
In response to information evaluation by Mapping Police Violence, in 2024, 1,252 People had been killed by police — greater than in another 12 months prior to now decade.
Regardless of being 12% of the inhabitants, Black individuals had been 25% of these killed by police in 2024. In 2020, the 12 months of Floyd’s homicide, Black individuals had been additionally 25% of these killed by police. In truth, Black persons are disproportionately killed by cops yearly.
But when public symbols like Black Lives Matter Plaza didn’t cease police from killing Black individuals — if the phrases had been solely performative — why has there been such a visceral backlash to it, and why have Republicans demanded that Bowser take away it?
Symbols Matter
Within the months after the homicide of George Floyd, 168 Accomplice statues, monuments, streets, and buildings had been eliminated or renamed. Outraged, Trump instructed Fox Information, “We must always be taught from the historical past. And in the event you don’t perceive your historical past, you’ll return to it once more.”
By that logic, then, as a result of Black Lives Matter Plaza was a part of historical past, it ought to have stayed put.
“D.C. is erasing historical past by eradicating Black Lives Matter Plaza—as soon as a strong image of justice—amid stress,” civil rights lawyer Benjamin Crump wrote on Threads.
However Clyde, the Republican from Georgia, gloated about it on X: “One week after I launched laws to rename Black Lives Matter Plaza, employees have began dismantling it. Making D.C. Nice Once more!”
Proper-wing commentator Charlie Kirk, sporting a large smile, filmed the beginning of the plaza’s removing, calling it the “finish of this mass race hysteria occurring in our nation.”
Not so quick, wrote Los Angeles-based screenwriter John Destes. “Charlie Kirk thinks somewhat paint thinner means black lives don’t matter anymore,” he tweeted.
Black Lives Have At all times Mattered
Ten days after he died, the hearse carrying Lewis’s stays stopped at Black Lives Matter Plaza on its procession to the U.S. Capitol Constructing for his memorial service. In a posthumous essay revealed on July 30 in The New York Occasions, Lewis wrote that seeing younger individuals protest Floyd’s homicide “impressed me.”
Tens of millions of individuals, he mentioned, had put apart the poison of division and embraced justice and unity.
“That’s the reason I needed to go to Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington, although I used to be admitted to the hospital the next day,” Lewis wrote. “I simply needed to see and really feel it for myself that, after a few years of silent witness, the reality remains to be marching on.”
The removing of the mural, nonetheless, just isn’t the tip of the story.
Symbols are highly effective, however actual change — an finish to Black individuals dying by the hands of police; an finish to Black moms dying extra typically than whites throughout childbirth; an finish to Black of us dying earlier, being extra prone to reside in poverty, extra prone to attend an underfunded faculty, extra prone to serve time in jail — is a matter of life and loss of life.
Lewis knew, lengthy earlier than the mural existed, that Black America has at all times mattered. Our ancestors who bled for justice knew our lives mattered. At all times. And no quantity of ripping up streets can change that.
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