Murals That Shaped Me

Studies in Public Memory - Jefferson Park

Murals are public memory. They tell stories that were never meant to be forgotten, especially in Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities where histories are often erased, ignored, or rewritten. These weren’t artworks I encountered in museums or textbooks, they were part of my everyday life. I walked past them on my way to school, to the liquor store, to the pawnshop. They existed where real life unfolded, in the streets of my neighborhood of Jefferson Park, witnessing joy, loss, struggle, and survival. Looking at a mural is so different than other artworks, its truly a different kind of painting.

Murals document our social realities. They speak to police violence, migration, incarceration, labor, love, grief, resistance and so much more. They honor people we have lost and celebrate the ones who kept going. They translate pain and pride into images and words that anyone walking by can understand. These stories matter because they remind us that our experiences are valid, that our communities have always been thinking, creating, and speaking for themselves.

Growing up in the Crenshaw District, these three murals are deeply familiar to those who know the area and its history. They are markers of place. They remind us who we are, who we come from, and what we’ve endured. As neighborhoods change and communities are pushed out, these murals become even more critical. They are often the last visible trace of a culture that once thrived in that space. For me, murals have always represented connection. They are visual archives recording moments, movements, and emotions that institutions never bothered to preserve. Murals exist outside of permission. They are honest, immediate, and unapologetically public. The works of Ian C. White, Noni Obalisi, and Moses X. Ball helped me understand art, storytelling, and responsibility. They were not created for galleries or collectors; they were made for the people. They taught me that art can educate, confront, heal, and hold memory all at once. Long before I had the language for design or visual culture, these murals taught me how images communicate power, care, and truth.

This is why preservation matters. Restoring murals is not about nostalgia, it’s about accountability. It’s about honoring the artists who gave their work to the public and the communities who lived alongside these images for decades and so forth. It’s about recognizing murals as cultural infrastructure, not disposable backdrops. If we allow these stories to fade, we are complicit in their erasure.

Murals belong to all of us.

TO PROTECT AND SERVE

by Noni Olabisi

Noni Olabisi is recognized for painting several renowned murals in South Los Angeles that depict black history in the United States and uplift the voices of communities most affected by racism and inequity. To Protect and Serve illustrates the lesser known history of the Black Panther Party (BPP). After a powerful conversation with Charles “Boko” Freeman about his involvement in the BPP, and the successes and resistance faced by the youth, she was inspired to paint the unwritten history of a community driven by self determination. In her mural, she captured the BPP’s Sickle Cell Anemia Program and Free Breakfast Program that Brother Boko and others had participated in. Commissioned through SPARC’s Neighborhood Pride Mural Program. This work ralso eferences the Ku Klux Klan, Bobby Seale bound during the Chicago Seven trial, civil rights figures Huey P. Newton and Angela Davis.

In a 2015 interview, artist Noni Olabisi described the mural as
“courage in the face of injustice.”

2301 West Jefferson Blvd (at 3rd Ave.) Jefferson Park, Los Angeles, CA 90018

Genocidal Tendencies

by Ian C. White

The son of Charles White, Ian shares his father’s sense of responsibility to raise consciousness with his art. His initial interest in murals developed out of an early exposure to the political billboard-like murals popular in Nicaragua during the rule of the Sandinistas. The premise of Genocidal Tendencies is the continuing problem of nuclear catastrophe and that as responsible people, we are obligated to create an environment that is safe and will ensure our children’s future. The mural is bordered by a series of circling Conestoga wagons. The old west anachronism is meant to symbolize the outdated sense of security that people possess, for just as the wagons offered little protection to pioneers, there is no protection for people in the event of a nuclear calamity. The three silos at the left of the mural are an ominous presence, an appropriate reminder of the tragedies of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. White intensifies his warning about atomic energy’s destructive potential by painting a border of circled covered wagons, a pointed reference to the historical genocide committed against American Indians.

11th Ave & Jefferson Blvd, Jefferson Park, Los Angeles, CA 90018

Black Seeds

by Moses X Ball and Shaw Park Muralist

One of the well-known murals in my neighborhood that is on the side of an apartment building located in Leslie N. Shaw Park. The mural features greats like: Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, Paul Robeson, Rosa Parks, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman,
Nelson Mandela, Michael Jackson, and many more.

This is meant to be an African American tree of life, a reminder on how African American accomplishments were intentionally left out of school textbooks about history.

2526 West Jefferson Blvd, Jefferson Park, Los Angeles, CA 90018