Inspired by Washington DC, community leaders in New York painted a gigantic Black Lives Matter street mural in the heart of Bedstuy, Brooklyn.
New York couldn’t stay behind. On June 15, volunteers spread yellow traffic paint into 28-foot tall letters, making a 375-foot long gigantic BLM street mural across Fulton street, in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.
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City Councilman Robert Cornegy Jr., who represents BedStuy, said his district was the natural home for the street project.
“Similar to what was done in Washington DC, we saw that it helped boost the morale of not only the demonstrators but of the ancillary community to it,” Cornegy said in an interview. “And we thought that since this community has been historically Black, and it’s the last bastion of Black homeownership, the last bastion of Black small business, this will be the right place in New York City to begin the Black Lives Matter mural movement.”
In addition to the Black Lives Matter message, the names of victims of police brutality are also memorialized in the artwork. The project is a joint effort between the Billie Holiday Theatre at Restoration Plaza and Cornegy, who originally reached out to artist Dawud West to commission a mural for the plaza.
The project started on June 13 and was kicked-off with Spike Lee, Reverend Al Sharpton, and the state Attorney General Letitia James hoisting paint rollers together.
This week, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that a street in every borough would be named after the Black Lives Matter movement.
