Wall of Respect

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Located at 43rd & Langley, the Wall of Respect was a larger-than-life catalog of black heroes painted in 1967 on the brick wall of a storefront by a local artists' collective.

In 1991 [Jeff Donaldson], an artist involved in the Wall's creation, wrote "The Rise, Fall and Legacy of the Wall of Respect Movement," an article about the Wall's creation and history.

The Wall of Respect sparked a "Community Mural Movement."  According to Social Design Notes.com, the Wall of Respect inspired black pride murals in Detroit, Boston, St. Louis, and Philadelphia, as well as Latino/a, Native American, and Asian American murals.

Northwestern University has a fabulous website: http://www.blockmuseum.northwestern.edu/wallofrespect/main.htm - dedicated to the Wall of Respect.  It offers an array of essays, poems and interviews interpreting the meaning of the wall.  Below are some of the points from the interviews:

         - Photographers from the wall saw themselves as visual artists - not merely photographers.  The work for the wall was often already shot because they had been shooting this sort of photography for some time (example, the two little girls singing in the church)

         - Eugene Eda (person who repainted Parish's section) - first time he had ever painted on brick wall.  Many of the subject matters were the same as Parish's the same.  Someone thought that the wall should continually change, like a newspaper and they continually changed their section - but Eda disagreed thinking that they should let the original wall stand and paint new murals representing the present. 

       - End of the wall:  Before the demolition there was talk about urban renewal in the area but the wall owner delayed it.  The fire which eventually destroyed the wall was seen to hurry along the process by this interviewee.  After the fire, what was left of the wall was torn down.


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  1. Feb 06, 2008

    rezorach says:

    There is a long tradition of developers and landlords in Chicago secretly settin...

    There is a long tradition of developers and landlords in Chicago secretly setting fires to speed demolition...