HARTFORD, Conn. _ The words "Black Lives Matter" quickly took shape on the pavement of Trinity Street in downtown Hartford this week, painted by Black artists, educators and students in a demonstration for racial justice and police reform.
They worked under the shadow of Bushnell Park's Civil War memorial arch and down the hill from the Connecticut State Capitol, where the House of Representatives passed a police accountability bill Friday morning after an all-night session. The legislation, which now moves on to the Senate, includes a controversial provision changing the law to allow civil lawsuits against police officers and municipalities in cases of police shootings, officer misconduct, and abuse of power.
"Without all the people out here using their voices, you think that would have happened? No," said Michael Oretade, a teacher in Manchester and leader of BLM 860, the Hartford-based Black Lives Matter group.
The mural was organized through a community partnership between BLM 860, longtime Hartford resident Levey Kardulis, local Black artists and the city of Hartford.
Kardulis took time throughout the two days to point out one of the figures near the base of the Soldiers & Sailors Memorial Arch, a freed slave holding in one hand a broken chain and in the other a chalkboard printed with the first letters of the alphabet. The monument and the State Capitol to the west made this the right spot, Kardulis said.
"This is where your state legislature is, all 169 towns, so if we really want to usher in some type of change, this is it," he said.
A number of people helped register volunteers to vote while others grabbed paint brushes. Art and literature professor and professional tutor Roxana Walker-Canton came from Hamden, where she's a member of the Hamden Board of Education and a group pushing for the creation of a Civilian Police Review Board.
"Police brutality is not just one town, it's not just the inner city," Walker-Canton said. "Efforts like this are what help build the message that we're all in this together. It's a human issue."
The city of Hartford donated the supplies and the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving provided stipends to the artists who designed the letters, according to Janice Castle, Hartford's director of community engagement.
The piece will be officially revealed on Sunday at 1 p.m., and the stretch of Trinity Street will remain closed to vehicles into the fall as a pilot pedestrian walkway.
While they were inspired by similar displays painted in Washington, D.C., and New York City, community organizers said they invited artists to design the individual letters to imbue the mural with the diversity of the Black identity and the movement.
Sixteen-year-old Evelyn Whitley, a student at Achievement First High School, styled the letter "C" like an American flag, but with the colors of the Afro-American Flag, black, red and green, to represent Black America.
Her guardian, artist and BLM 860 member LaShawn Robinson, planned to fill the letter "B" with names of prominent Black civil rights activists like longtime Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., who died last week, and victims of police violence.
"I think we should paint the city," she said Friday, as she turned a section of pavement a vibrant yellow. "We should paint the whole city."
Like several other painters on Friday, she said it felt almost healing to physically mark Hartford with all of the frustration, pain and trauma that's been wrought by decades of racial bias in policing.
Robinson, 39, has been protesting police brutality since 1999, when a Hartford police officer shot and killed Aquan Salmon, a Black, 14-year-old boy, in his Vine Street neighborhood. The bullet struck Aquan in the back while he and other youths were running from a car in a vacant lot.
Later that year, city and community leaders reached agreements meant to ensure the police department lived up to a 1973 federal consent decree on police training, racial diversity, and the use of tear gas, firearms and deadly force.
Earlier this month, the Hartford city council urged the administration to request the federal court not "sunset" that consent decree until yet more progress has been made.
Robinson spent a good part of Friday morning thinking about Aquan, the name she most wanted to paint in her piece of the mural.
"It took me decades to even start to talk to police in the neighborhood because I had so much trauma from things like that," Robinson said, adding that one of her brothers was strip searched by officers and another beaten in front of others in the community. "I feel like we're n a little bit better space now."
The activists did face criticism on Thursday from several people who disagreed with the prominent display.
One man who harassed several painters then sought backup by knocking on the window of one of the police cruisers blocking traffic onto Trinity Street, said Sacha Kelly, a Hartford resident and math teacher who was painting the outlines of the letters for others to fill in. The man was nonplussed when a Black, female officer rolled down the window and voiced her support for the mural, Kelly said.
"If all lives truly did matter, we wouldn't need the movement because we wouldn't be attacked with policies, practices and policing," she said. "This message needs to be put out so those who are in support can see it and those that are not can see this is the time, we matter, and the movement is not going away."
