Students’ mural depicting African American history to reappear after 20 years
A piece of UCLA’s history will soon be shared — for the second time — with the campus community. Efforts are currently underway to bring "The Black Experience," a detailed mural created and displayed by seven African American art students in 1970, back into public view.
The mural, which measures 10 feet high by 27 feet wide, is located on a wall next to Panda Express on the first floor of Ackerman Union. A false wall erected in front of it during some renovations in 1992 has kept it hidden for 20 years.
"It was important in 1970, as it is today, to address issues of racial disparity on the UCLA campus, the entire University of California and on campuses across the United States," said Helen Singleton, one of the artists who helped design and create the art piece over an intensive three-week period in the spring of 1970. At that time, said Singleton, UCLA had taken several steps to increase campus diversity, including hiring qualified professors and administrators, and admitting qualified students of color.
"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," said Singleton, who graduated from UCLA in 1974.
Each of the seven art students, including Singleton, Marian Brown, Neville Garrick, Andrea Hill, Jane Staulz, Joanne Stewart and Michael Taylor, is depicted in the mural, along with a young man on the far left who was not a student, said Singleton. Their heads, necks and shoulders are overlaid with myriad silk-screened graphics showing, among other images, a poster advertising the sale of slaves and pictures of African American leaders, including Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and Angela Davis...
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