In 1974, Maynard Jackson was elected mayor of Atlanta. Atlanta has a long tradition of Black political muscle in coalition with the white business ruling class; Jackson was firmly planted in this tradition. His grandfather, John Wesley Dobbs, was an early leader of the city’s Black middle class and organizer of voter registration drives. Jackson’s own mayoralty was largely an agreed-upon political transition for the city’s ruling coalition, the fact that it occurred an election earlier than the white ruling class was comfortable with depended on mobilization at the polls by the Black community. Especially in his first term, Jackson repaid this victory with a series of reforms - mostly to the benefit of the Black middle class, but also some concessions to the neighborhood-based community movements. One of these was increased public funding for the arts expanded through the creation of the Office of Cultural Affairs (later renamed the Bureau of Cultural Affairs) and the Neighborhood Arts Center. [There used to be a great website on the NAC which seems to have disappeared]. The NAC, located in Southwest Atlanta close to downtown, received city dollars and housed visual and performing artists who offered free community classes in the arts. In 1975, three artists associated with these projects – Nathan Hoskins, Verna Parks, and Ashanti Johnson, painted Atlanta’s Wall of Respect. It was the last of these murals to be completed.

Located on Auburn Avenue, the historical commercial and cultural center of Atlanta’s African-American community (and called "Sweet Auburn" by Jackson’s grandfather) the mural originally decorated a brick wall adjoining an abandoned lot at the intersection with Piedmont Avenue. Each of the wall’s six sections contains a strong visual theme which communicates a series of historical vignettes.

In the left corner, a saxophonist plays in front of a chained African boy, followed by blue-tinted portraits of Martin Luther King, Frederick Douglass, Malcolm X and W.E.B. Dubois. Between the blue panel and a full-body portrait of Muhammad Ali, Johnson placed several potent images. The bust of a second anonymous Black child is juxtaposed with the mask and headdress of ancient Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamen. Tutankhamen’s tomb was unearthed during the 1920s when interest and reverence for African history, spearheaded by Carter G. Woodson, played an important role in shaping modern Black Nationalism. A trio of West African ancestor masks placed below the two portraits reinforces the idea of attention to the past. At the same time, a closed fist and outstretched hand in the following panel emphasize continuing aspirations towards freedom.

The second half of The Wall of Respect features contemporary figures rendered in full-color or black and white photorealism. A young, grimacing Muhammad Ali lunges towards the viewer. To his right, the final panel of the mural depicts Angela Davis, John Coltrane, and an anonymous third figure against the pan-African red, black and green tricolor. At the far right a dedication reads: "To honor, to love, to cherish/ our strong ones alive and those who have perished/ While fighting for truth our souls to protect/ We love you, we give you a wall of respect."

Community and Development around Atlanta’s Wall of Respect By 1977, Congress had designated the entire Sweet Auburn district, which contains Dr. Martin Luther King’s birth home, a National Historic Landmark. In 1980 it was upgraded to a National Historic Site. Complex interests competed for a vision of the area: neighborhood residents, the King Center (controlled by Dr. King’s family), absentee property owners, and the city’s own grand plans of nurturing tourism in a downtown badly damaged by white flight. As the Park Service set up office near King’s historic birth home, tension mounted around the fear of bureaucratic control, and potential displacement of politically marginal residents of the area, who were entirely African-American and mostly elderly. Community members formed Concerned Citizens of the Old Fourth Ward and the Auburn Avenue Revitalization Committee, as well as operating through NPU-M, to publicize these concerns and influence the planning process. In anticipation of the 1996 Olympic Games, the Corporation for Olympic Development in Atlanta (CODA), a project of Maynard Jackson’s return to a third term as mayor, hoped to "break up the Auburn Avenue corridor in a way that might attract pedestrians - during the Olympics and after." So John C. Calhoun Park and J.W. Dobbs Plaza were constructed, with tourist-friendly markers emphasizing a mainstream narrative of the Avenue’s history (centered on a pristine past that abruptly omits the economic devastation of the 1970s-90s). John Calhoun Park, on the site of what had long been a parking lot, provided benches and green space immediately adjacent to the Wall of Respect. Ashanti Johnson’s son, Yusef, told me that in 1995 Anheuser-Busch paid to refurbish the mural. Homeless men congregated in the park during the day. When I took the pictures above in fall 2006, several bystanders were eager to show off the mural and identify the figures in it.

Posted by: Isaac Silver to Solidarity on May 11, 2008

Last updated: February 13, 2010