Too bad Dad is not around to see this.
A mural that my late father, Norman Parish Jr., and more than a dozen politically active black artists in Chicago created in the late 1960s on Chicago’s South Side is finally receiving some big-time recognition. This weekend, the Art Institute of Chicago is commemorating the famed and controversial Wall of Respect, which celebrated black achievement, with a symposium and other events.
Today, the mural, which is credited with sparking the creation of other ethnic murals around the world, would be almost a half-century old had a fire not broken out at the site in 1971. The building that displayed the mural was eventually razed.
Washingtonians might know my father from a business he owned in Georgetown for more than two decades — Parish Gallery, which closed a few months after he died of a brain tumor in 2013.
Other artists with Washington ties also participated in the mural project — photographer Roy Lewis and artists Wadsworth Jarrell and Jeff Donaldson, who both taught at Howard University.
The fact that the Art Institute of Chicago is remembering these artists and their work is a big deal. Even some of the event’s organizers can’t remember the last time, if ever, the prestigious institute toasted a large group of black artists at the same time.
Other Chicago-area organizations backing the effort are the Terra Foundation for American Art, the South Side Community Art Center, the University of Chicago, DePaul University and the Guild Literary Complex.
In 1967, the mural was far from mainstream. Before that, murals typically were created for indoor spaces and were funded by sponsors. But the Wall of Respect was painted with no strings attached. The artists, who were associated with the Organization of Black American Culture’s Visual Arts Workshop, could make an independent statement without having to answer to financial benefactors.
Paid for by the artists, the mural was painted on an old grocery and liquor store at 43rd Street and Langley Avenue in the rough Bronzeville neighborhood. The work featured 34 prominent black figures, including Malcolm X, Cicely Tyson, Bill Russell and Muhammad Ali. Missing from the mural? The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who, according to my dad, was seen by the young artists as “not being strong enough.”
The site quickly attracted activities important to the black community, including political rallies by such civil rights groups as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). The wall also was the “starter point” of a new arts movement, said Edmund Barry Gaither, director of the museum of the National Center of Afro-American Artists in Boston.
“It gave us a roadmap,” Gaither said. “We followed in Boston.”
Although today the mural is being celebrated by museums and universities, some of its artists said that when it was being painted, law enforcement kept a close watch on the project. Donaldson, the late former dean of Howard University’s College of Fine Arts, claimed that the group was being harassed by the FBI and that they received threatening letters.
Then there were the disputes among the artists.
For example, my father’s “statesmen section,” which included Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Turé), H. Rap Brown (Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin), Adam Clayton Powell and Marcus Garvey, was whitewashed a while after the mural was completed, and other images were added later.
The same figures were never placed in the same spot.
Some said that section was painted over because mural leader Bill Walker wasn’t happy with how it had been done; others said law enforcement wanted the figures removed because they were too militant.
Whatever the reason, my father was deeply disturbed. In 1969, he created his own large, two-panel painting of the mural, with the bottom portion showing a whitewash.
By the 1980s, still frustrated, he painted over the bottom part of the painting. The top of the painting remained.
Despite the conflicts, the mural was a launching pad for my father and other African American artists. In 1968, Jarrell, Donaldson and others helped found AfriCOBRA (African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists), creating a singular black aesthetic in visual arts. And Walker continued creating similar murals, painting prominent ones in Detroit.
Family photo of Norman Parish (writer, left), his wife, Valerie Parish and daughter, Ashley and father, also named Norman Parish (far right). This photo was taken in 2011 at Ashley's high school graduation. (Courtesy Parish family)
My father, who moved to Washington in the late ’80s, had a hard time finding galleries in the city that would showcase his landscape paintings. So in 1991, he founded Parish Gallery in Georgetown with a focus on works by African Americans and other artists of the African diaspora. Even though he often struggled to make ends meet, the gallery remained open in tony Georgetown until shortly after his death.
He showcased the work of more than 170 artists, including Sam Gilliam, E.J. Montgomery, Benny Andrews, Willard Wigan, Romare Bearden and Richard Mayhew. Artists who worked on the Wall of Respect also had pieces in the gallery, including Jarrell and Lewis. Parish Gallery reflected my dad’s passion of bringing art to the masses and, at same time, giving black artists a venue to exhibit their work.
Like many artists, my father committed his life to art — even as he aged. In the last year of his life, when his illness severely weakened his right arm, he would use his left arm to support it so he could paint.
A few weeks before he died, when he was too sick to leave his bed, Dad refused to look at television. In his baritone voice, he told me was no longer able to do anything to try to help blacks or others shown suffering in newscasts.
Like my father, Gaither believes that art can be used as a positive force to improve society and that the Wall of Respect commemorations should not be simply a look at the past.
A discussion about the wall without raising current issues and the future, Gaither said, “would be a sellout.”
Dad would be all for talking about contemporary social issues, such as unemployment and police brutality in the black community, along with those affecting art. And if he were still alive and healthy, he would probably be one of the first people at the art institute’s events this weekend. He graduated from the school.
Too bad it took nearly 50 years to happen.
I wish he could see it.
Norman Parish III is a former assistant metro editor at the Chicago Sun-Times.
The Wall of Respect and People’s Art Since 1967—A Symposium (School of the Art Institute)
Wall of Respect (Chris Gregory)
Wall of Respect on the Web (Block Museum/Northwestern University)
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