Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
A Monument to Blackness: Murals and Black Liberation, from the Harlem Renaissance to Black Lives Matter

A Monument to Blackness: Murals and Black Liberation, from the Harlem Renaissance to Black Lives Matter

Jeffery, Hannah

Paperback

Black American StudiesGeneral ArtGeneral Sociology

ISBN10: 0820375225
ISBN13: 9780820375229
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Published: Jan 15 2026
Pages: 318
Weight: 0.95
Height: 0.72 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English

A Monument to Blacknessoffers an in-depth look at Black murals across the United States, from interior murals in the South to street murals predominantly in the North and West. It shows us how Black murals were--and remain--an integral but commonly overlooked artistic expression in the movement for Black liberation across the country. Focusing on works from 1930 to the present day, Hannah E. Jeffery demonstrates the elusive connection between Black politics, public art, memory, and space to show how murals created unprecedented interactive sites of Black imagination and empowerment within Black communities. Showcasing Black life, Black love, Black Power, and Black history and painting it onto buildings in the streets, muralists creatively transformed walls of isolated Black neighborhoods into spaces of education, ritual, performance, and commemoration. By tracing the genealogy of Black muralism throughout the movement for Black liberation, A Monument to Blackness uncovers how, why, and when murals became catalysts for inspiring community interaction, and it unearths a largely unwritten narrative of Black visual protest in the fight for twentieth- and twenty-first-century Black liberation.

Jeffery calls on original artist testimony, extensive archival research, and the fields of Black, visual, and American studies to underscore how walls in racially isolated Black communities became inspirational, imaginative, and subversive spaces for residents to protest against social, racial, and political oppression; contest geographical confinement; celebrate Blackness; and commemorate a Black history. Not only does A Monument to Blackness help deepen our understanding of the movement for Black liberation by uncovering an overlooked expression of Black community art, but it arrives at a moment in America's history when understanding the deeper roots of this powerful mural movement will help contextualize the current wave of murals sweeping across the nation in this age of Black Lives Matter.

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