E Pluribus Unum, “Out of Many, One,” was a mural created by Lewis Lavoie in 2012. Described as a snapshot of America, the mural brings together 50 different stories from American history, celebrating a diverse past. Located in South Jordan City’s central City Hall building, the mural is a collage of narratives such as ‘The Abolitionist Movement,’ ‘the Civil War,’ ‘The Creation of the New Media’ and ‘Westward Expansion’ for example. 

Two years prior to the Texas Centennial Exposition, Aaron Douglas created a four-part mural series titled Aspects of Negro Life, to be housed in the 135th Street branch of the New York Public Library, the Schomburg Center. The various panels portray black history from slavery through to present. The various panels are titled, The Negro in an African Setting, From Slavery Through Reconstruction, Song of the Towers, and An Idyll of the Deep South, and depict the breaking of chains, the idea of self-emancipation, liberation, and the celebration of African culture.    

In 1976, the Mexican muralist Manuel Martinez created a mural at Auraria College titled Races of the Student Population. It depicts the antislavery leader Frederick Douglass alongside figures of the Black Power Movement including Bobby Seale, and figures and symbols of the African diaspora.  

The Wall of Respect was the first exterior African American mural in the United States. Painted by OBAC (Organisation of Black American Culture), it underwent three main phases, as shown throughout the photographs here. Its creation was an inclusive process, asking local residents to decide which black heroes should be included in the mural. This was an integral step in the mural-making process because “any muralist who’s doing anything of a thoughtful nature should always have an input from the community,” artist Bill Walker observed. “You can’t do things that make people think they’re not a part of things.” Compiling a newsletter and consulting local militant street gangs, OBAC wrote a list of historic and contemporaneous figures to be memorialised on the wall, before waiting for their approval. “The militant [members of the community] were the ones that defined who would go on the wall and who would not,” artist Eugene Eda Wade remembers in a 2017 oral history interview. The choices were figures from the past and present who “charted their own course” through life and “did not compromise their humanity,” including the antislavery leader Nathaniel Turner, as well as James Brown, James Baldwin, Thelonious Monk, Malcolm X, Nina Simone, Claudia McNeil, Stokely Carmichael, H. Rap Brown, Elijah Muhammad, Gwendolyn Brooks and Muhammad Ali. By celebrating radical black heroes of the past and present, the mural became a site of black cultural heritage and an unofficial landmark on Chicago’s southside. It also catalysed a national mural movement, with more than 300 murals painted in Chicago alone over the next few decades. In 1971, the mural was destroyed in a fire.  

In spring 1936, as part of the “healing process of the nation” during the aftermath of the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt approved the Texas Centennial Exposition in Dallas. Although African Americans took part in the exhibition, their designated section of the fair was in the Hall of Negro Life; a separate building isolated from the main path by a row of cedar trees and shrubs. One of the murals on show was Aaron Douglas’s Into Bondage. Douglas’ murals gave African Americans a new identity at the Exposition by drawing on a usable antislavery past to develop an alternative narrative of black history: no longer passive enslaved supplicants, African Americans are empowered liberators. Douglas layered the mural with a guide for potential resistance.

Titled A Man and His Struggles, this mural by Magic Fingers is in the Oak Park area of Chicago and depicts the first African American mayor of the city, Harold Washington, alongside Martin Luther King Jr., Jesse Jackson, and the antislavery leader Frederick Douglass. In 2016, artists updated the mural, to add the Pan-African flag along its bottom edge.

In Plano, Texas, artists Lynne Chinn and Shug Jones created a mosaic mural titled Tracks of Our Past and Future. Made in 2006, the mural is 75 feet long and celebrates the African American community of Plano, Texas. At the centre of the mural is the antislavery leader Frederick Douglass. 

In 1997, a muralist working for the Old Town Development Board completed a mural called Paintin’ the Town on North Loudoun Street in Winchester, Virginia. It includes a depiction of Douglass during the later period of his life. It had now been destroyed.

In 2014, muralist Maryanna Donnelly created this pop art style mural at the Frederick Douglass Academy Elementary School in Los Angeles.

Brandan Odums’ murals are unusual because they tend to be off-limits to the public. One of the few muralists to reclaim dilapidated and abandoned building spaces as canvasses after Hurricane Katrina, Odums created a series of graffiti murals that aimed to inspire and provoke audiences. Although conscious of legal repercussions, Odums believed he had “a responsibility to influence people. If I see there’s a problem with a property that’s been sitting there for eight years, then I’m going to solve it within my own brain.” Turning a site of neglect into a site of pride, Odums used the Florida Housing Development in the Ninth Ward as his canvas for #projectbe, filling it wall-to-wall with portraits and quotations from figures that include the antislavery leader Frederick Douglass, Huey P. Newton, Nina Simone and James Baldwin. His artwork was deemed illegal due to his trespassing on private property. It was only seen in person by handful of visitors. After #projectbe ended, Odums embarked on a larger project at Degaulle Manor – a 360-unit apartment block. After speaking with the owner of the property, Odums was granted permission to temporarily use the building and invite the public. This project was called Exhibit BE. Around 35 street artists assisted and turned the abandoned building into one of the largest street exhibitions in the south, with 30,000 people visiting Exhibit BE in three months. The second mural of Douglass is from this exhibition. 

This mural was painted on 3260 23rd St, between Mission and Capp Streets, in San Francisco by Susan Caruso Green, and was a  community collaboration between muralists and local residents. It brings together faces from global history who have fought for civil rights, including the antislavery leader Harriet Tubman, Nelson Mandela, Gandhi, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr. 

In 1970, a group of seven black UCLA art students created a mural titled The Black Experience on the first floor of the Ackerman Student Union building. The mural, which measures 10 feet by 27 feet, was obscured for 20 years by a false wall erected in front of it during building renovations in 1992. Then in 2013, the mural was restored. “It was important in 1970, as it is today, to address issues of racial disparity on the UCLA campus,” one of the artists, Helen Singleton said. “Our mission in creating ‘The Black Experience’ mural was to expand and enhance that effort with a visual representation of the history and experience of African Americans in the United States.” The seven art students, Helen Singleton, Marian Brown, Neville Garrick, Andrea Hill, Jane Staulz, Joanne Stewart and Michael Taylor, are all depicted in the mural, alongside silk-screened graphics of the antislavery leaders Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman, alongside Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Bobby Seale, Huey P. Newton, Muhammad Ali, and Angela Davis. “We learned a lot about our history by exploring what images to use,” said Garrick, who was a freshman from Jamaica when he participated in the art project. In 2012, the effort to uncover the mural gained momentum after members of the Afrikan Student Union brought the mural to the attention of the Associated Students UCLA board of directors. At the unveiling in 2013, both Singleton and Garrick were guests of honour, along with activist Angela Davis.

Woodrow Nash created a mural for the Odom Branch Library in the 1970s, depicting the antislavery leader Frederick Douglass alongside Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. In 1999, the library was remodelled and expanded to around 12,000 square feet. With the expansion came two new murals about black history. The original mural was edited – this time to incorporate the antslavery leader Sojourner Truth. By adding Truth to the mural, Nash was trying to reflect the contribution of women to the liberation struggle.

In 1973, Cityarts Workshop muralist James Jannuzzi painted a mural in New York City about Puerto Rican abolition, gang culture and black heritage. The mural includes a shirtless, muscular figure playing drums in a tropical landscape, Nubian symbols such as the ankh next to pyramids, and Ramón Emeterio Betances – an abolitionist and the father of the Puerto Rican independence movement. In the centre of the mural, Jannuzzi painted seven spears, acknowledging the presence of the neighbourhood’s seven gangs through the use of colour. By 1978, the mural had already started to deteriorate. Wanting to use the mural as a background in a film, a production company sought out Jannuzzi, asking him to retouch sections of the mural. Having hung up his paintbrush already, Jannuzzi directed the production company to Cityarts' Alfredo “Freddy” Hernandez who retouched the mural with a Dancing Madonna. By 1995 all that remained of Afro Latin Coalition was the Dancing Madonna in her red and white dress, and by 2000, the entire mural has disappeared.

Ed Trask, a Richmond-based muralist, created this mural in 2011 at the Seven Hills School in Richmond. It depicts the antislavery leader Frederick Douglass, as well as local figures Maggie Walker, Oliver W. Hill and Spottswood Robinson III. The other side of the building depicts Langston Hughes and W.E.B. Du Bois.

In 1990, this mural titled Nation of Islam at Charles Place in Brooklyn was created. The mural unites many radical figures of black history, including the antislavery leader Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. Du Bois, Elijah Muhammad, H. Rap Brown, Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey, Eldridge Cleaver and Bobby Seale. It has now been destroyed.  

Walter Edmonds memorialised Father Paul Washington of the Philadelphia Church of the Advocate, on the side of a building in the Strawberry Mansion district of Philadelphia in 1990. Father Washington was a prominent social activist in the area of Philadelphia.The creation of this mural is a good example of the call-and-response relationship generated by communities. After Walter Edmonds painted the mural Father Paul Washington, local residents were not satisfied with the likeness. As a result, Washington’s face was repainted by artist Stuart Yankell. Washington stands with arms outstretched surrounded by other local and famous heroes, including the antislavery leader Frederick Douglass.

This mural was created in 2008 by an unknown artist. Painted on a storefront on Ralph Avenue in Brooklyn, it depicted Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass and Nelson Mandela. As of 2014, it no longer existed.

In 2013, Rahmann Statik painted two murals on the sides of a building in Beauregard Town, Baton Rouge. The murals cover the entirety of the building’s façade and reads, “Free Your Mind” alongside an image of Frederick Douglass, whilst the likeness of Harriet Tubman decorates the other side of the wall. Statik grew up on the southside of Chicago, surrounded by murals, and trained at the American Academy of Arts before working with Gallery 37 to teach mural creation to children. As of 2014, the mural no longer exists.

In 2011, muralist Aniekan Udofia painted Bread for the City in Anacostia, D.C., close to the historic site of Frederick Douglass' house. The mural depicts Douglass in the younger, radical phase of his life, surrounded by doves and children, and the words “One People,” “One Community,” and “Building Together.” By 2016, the mural had been destroyed.