When George Washington High School opened its doors in August 1936, 1,600 square feet of its interior walls were covered with a a series of murals depicting the life of the school’s namesake, and the country’s first President, George Washington.
The murals were painted by Victor Arnautoff, a Russian-American painter and professor of art, with assistance from artists George Harris and Gorden Langdon. Arnautoff was a well-known muralist at the time, having painted one of the murals at Coit Tower where he became the Technical Director of the project.
When Arnautoff created the George Washington mural series, he used the rare buon fresco process, painting with earth-tone pigments directly onto the building’s wet plaster before it dried. The artist covered about nine feet of wall per day, and worked ten to twelve hours per day.
“Mr. Arnautoff had to follow right behind the plasterers, and a scene, once begun, had to be completed that same day, in order that the walls did not dry. Carpenters and plasterers worked all around the building, while Mr. Arnautoff was above on a scaffold,” according to outsidelands.org.
It took ten months to complete the mural series. At the time of its completion, Arnautoff’s George Washington murals were the largest WPA-funded, single-artist mural suite on the Pacific Coast.
Two panels of the mural draw fire for their depiction of African-Americans and Native Americans
Two of the thirteen panels in the mural series have come under fire since the 1960’s for their controversial depictions of African-Americans and Native Americans.
In one mural, entitled “Mount Vernon”, George Washington appears to be in conversation with another Caucasian man who gestures towards a seated African-American man holding corn, presumably a slave. In other parts of the mural, African-Americans are engaged in acts of manual labor like hauling large bales of hay and picking cotton in the fields, while Caucasian men are also laboring at other tasks with tools. Washington’s servant, who is pictured holding his horse, is also African-American. The mural is a clear depiction of slavery in the United States, and of George Washington as a slave owner.
The second panel, entitled ‘Westward Vision”, depicts Benjamin Franklin and other founding fathers looking at George Washington as he points off in the distance, while he points with his other hand to a map. On the right side of the mural, as if carrying out Washington’s call for westward expansion, frontiersmen, depicted in greyscale unlike other figures in the mural, stand over the dead body of a Native American man, signifying the genocide of Native American life and culture.
In the bottom right of the “Westward Vision” panel, a frontiersman and Native American chief sit at a campfire smoking a peace pipe. On the ground at the chief’s feet is a tomahawk, symbolizing the disarming of Native tribes. Directly above the Chief’s headdress is a broken tree limb representing broken treaties made by the U.S. government with Native Americans, and broken promises made by settlers.
Public complaints first came to light about these mural panels in the late 1960’s, and at the time, opponents called for the destruction of the murals due to their offensive depictions of African-Americans and Native Americans.
In response, the school decided to install new murals with more positive imagery by artist Dewey Crumpler. His murals, entitled “Multi-Ethnic Heritage: Black, Asian, Native/Latin American”, depict Latin Americans, Native Americans, Asian Americans, and African Americans overcoming oppression. They were completed in 1974.
What was the artist’s intention?
While there is no disputing that the two panels could be viewed as offensive for their demeaning and hurtful depictions of African-Americans and Native Americans, others argue that Arnautoff’s intention with his paintings was to present the realities of US history that were, and still are, often white-washed.
In his time, Arnautoff was considered a left-wing liberal. Many of his murals featured humanist themes, including concerns about class, labor, and power.
Robert Cherny, a professor emeritus at San Francisco State University who wrote a biography about Victor Arnautoff, believes the artist was presenting “a “counter narrative” to the prevailing high school textbooks of the time because his representation of the westward expansion included the slaughter of Native Americans, and he presented Washington as a slave owner, both facts the official narrative back then tended to either ignore or gloss over.” [Richmond Review]
“He put those ghastly gray pioneers literally walking over the dead body of an Indian to demonstrate that the settlement of the west was an act of conquest that involved the slaughter of Native Americans,” Cherny said at a 2018 Board of Education meeting. “That was a very bold effort on his part to counter the kinds of textbooks that students were seeing.”
Arnautoff painted this self-portrait opposing HR 9490, the McCarran Internal Security Act, which required Communist organizations to register with the U.S. Attorney General and established the Subversive Activities Control Board.
Photo Credit: With kind permission of INVA publishing house, Russia
Former Board of Education member Shamann Walton wasn’t buying Cherny’s interpretation of Arnautoff’s work at that 2018 meeting.
“I don’t understand how people who are not affected by the depiction of a mural could come in here and tell us how Native Americans and Indians should see the mural and what’s on there, when (Native Americans) came here and told us it was offensive to them and they said that these murals caused problems and issues for their community,” Walton said at the meeting.
“I don’t see how anybody could come up here and try to tell us how positive that is, or what the positive point of view is. It‘s insulting to me that anybody who is not affected by the depiction can come in here and try to do that.”
A recommendation for landmark status for the school re-ignites the mural controversy
In 2017, San Francisco Heritage proposed that George Washington High School be designated a historical landmark, in large part to protect the WPA-era George Washington murals and art-deco friezes located around the school.
The high school is part of the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD), and falls under the jurisdiction of the Board of Education. The Board was divided about the school’s potential landmark status, primarily because designating it as such would mean that modifying or removing the controversial murals would be near impossible afterwards.
In 2018, the SFUSD created a “Reflection and Action Group” to consider the controversial murals at George Washington High School, and provide a recommendation for how to address them.
The 13 member working group held four public meetings and in February 2019, issued their final recommendation: to remove the entire Life of George Washington mural series from the school.
“We come to these recommendations due to the continued historical and current trauma of Native Americans and African Americans with these depictions in the mural that glorifies slavery, genocide, colonization, manifest destiny, white supremacy, oppression, etc. This mural doesn’t represent SFUSD values of social justice, diversity, united, student-centered. It’s not student-centered if it’s focused on the legacy of artists, rather than the experience of the students. If we consider the SFUSD equity definition, the “low” mural glorifies oppression instead of eliminating it. It also perpetuates bias through stereotypes rather than ending bias. It has nothing to do with equity or inclusion at all. The impact of this mural is greater than its intent ever was. It’s not a counter-narrative if [the mural] traumatizes students and community members.”
Because the murals are painted onto the plaster of the walls at the school, removing them would mean painting them over with white paint.
Ideas abound for how to save the murals – and provide historical context
Now that the Reflection and Action Group has made their recommendation to remove all of the George Washington murals from the school before the start of the 2019-2020 school year, it is up to the Board of Education to make the final decision.
One group, the George Washington High School Alumni Association, has started an online and direct mail campaign that calls for the preservation of the murals, as well as ideas for how to turn the controversial depictions into educational opportunities for students and the community:
- Screen the two panels in question to prevent inadvertent viewing, a solution used in a similar situation in Washington, D.C.
- Place interpretive panels to clarify the murals’ intent and document how they have been experienced by Native American, African American, and other students of color, as has been done in a similar situation in New York.
- Develop a site-specific curriculum on contemporary issues related to the Native American experience.
- Create new murals in prominent locations with positive portrayals of Native Americans including San Francisco’s Ramaytush Yelamu Ohlone tribe
The alumni group has launched an online petition at tinyurl.com/SaveTheMurals that supporters can sign, asking the Board of Education to reject the proposal to remove the murals. They are also asking those who want to save the murals to contact members of the Board of Education to express their support for preservation.
“[The murals] are a priceless example of WPA art painted by a left-wing artist and unusually progressive for their time. The murals include forthright depictions of the injustices experienced by Native Americans and African-Americans during Washington’s lifetime. With implementation of one or more of the solutions proposed by the Alumni Association to sensitively address the concerns raised, the murals can be a catalyst for discussing the sins committed as our country was founded.”
“If they vote to remove the mural, we’ll mount a legal challenge,” Lope Yap Jr., vice president of George Washington’s alumni association, told thefrisc.com. Yap Jr. was the only alumni member in the Reflection and Action group, and the only member who voted to preserve the murals.
The Living New Deal is a nonprofit based at UC Berkeley whose mission is the research, presentation and education of New Deal projects, including artworks from the era. They also created a campaign to save the George Washington murals, calling for “informative signage installed on site [that] would offer an opportunity to make visible, rather than accept the historical injustices of Colonial America.”
“History should not be erased. The National Museum of African American History & Culture in Washington DC has displays devoted to a discussion of slavery. The Holocaust Museum is dedicated to educating about genocide so that people will “never forget,” what happened. The Choctaw Cultural Center educates visitors about the “Trail of Tears.” George Washington High School can deliver the same message.”
Another group concerned with San Francisco’s public art scene and history are staying out of the controversy, despite having a history with the mural series.
The San Francisco Arts Commission, whose mission is to champion “the arts as essential to daily life by investing in a vibrant arts community, enlivening the urban environment and shaping innovative cultural policy,” made a video in 2010 about the murals at the school. It wasn’t a video about destroying the murals, but rather one about a partnership with SFMOMA and the school to restore them.
However nothing ever came of the project and no funds were invested for the murals’ restoration. Recently, the SFAC effectively recused themselves from any decision about the murals despite calling it a “significant WPA era mural”.
In an April 1 meeting of the full Arts Commission, Director of Cultural Affairs Tom DeCaigny said, “The Arts Commission does not have jurisdiction over artworks on other government entities’ properties and in this case the body that is responsible for that mural is the San Francisco Unified School District School Board. We have historically – and this is where I think some of the confusion comes from – we have advised on the care of that mural throughout the history of the Arts Commission. It’s a significant WPA era mural so in that sense we have over the years had an advisement role and we have provided some conservation advice…it is not our jurisdiction to take a position on the mural, its contents, or its removal or its preservation.”
The SFAC was involved in the removal of the “Early Days” statue from Civic Center in September 2018. In a February 2018 meeting, the SFAC voted to remove the statue because it depicted “the degradation and genocide of Native American peoples” using stereotypes that “are now universally viewed as disrespectful, misleading, and racist.”
No date set yet for SFUSD vote
A public hearing and Board of Education vote about the murals has not yet been announced, according to SFUSD spokeswoman Laura Dudnick. But it could happen as soon as this month.
A regular Board Meeting is scheduled for today, April 9 at 6pm, and another for April 23 (SFUSD Board Meeting schedule). Meeting dates are also on the calendar for May and June.
If you’re interested in viewing the Life of George Washington murals on the high school campus, email newsline@sfusd.edu for public viewing times.
So should the murals be saved or destroyed? Weigh in on the poll below, or leave a comment to let us know what you think.
Sarah B.
Hi Sarah,
I’m a graduate of GWHS, class of 2001. My history classes, from 9th and 10th grade, we did not talk about Washington being a slave owner, which was weird, but it wasnt mention in our history books either. On my own accord, I was coming to terms with my sexuality, in 10th grade, we are supposed to focus a half of semester on the holocaust. My modern world teacher refused to teach it to us, because she had lost relatives in the holocaust, I empathised with her but I knew I was being cheated, especially when I was researching about the pink triangle prisoners, the signifance how the pink triangle is connected to the lgbtq community. I flunked the first semester out of protest because I was so angry with my teacher. Luckily in 11th and 12th grade, I had Terri Camajani as a teacher, who gave us the full backstory on Washington being a slave owner, we never used the sfusd curriculum… Why? Because even in fall 99 to Spring 01 there was still no official curriculum about Washington being a slave owner and the native American genocide. What the school board is missing, these pieces of art is NOT glorifying slavery or genocide, but it’s showing and telling a story the history books ‘approved’ by the board of education refused to tell. Art is supposed to evoke emotion, I find this art piece offensive, but I see the significance behind it and why it was done. If we whitewash it or censor it, we’re doom to repeat this again, and in its own way it is being repeated. I had a little meet up with 01 grads and a friend from the class of ’80 this was a hot discussion. I think have a small plaque explaining the backstory of these paintings would be ideal. Another thing, let the students do another mural similar to what the BSU did in ’69. There was a time when each class did a mural, they were a lot of fun to look at.
The art is good
Was repeatedly taught about slavery
Was shocked to discover that a lot of groups of different Americans faced prejudice
Was even more shocked to find out my own people sold us or that Natives slaughtered one another in some cases
It doesn’t excuse what we did when we settled this country, but I look around the world and I know I don’t want to move back to Africa, I don’t want to live in a lot of other places. We change. We talk about stuff. We try to do better than our young past. Other countries are older and they won’t even let women vote or drive or walk down the street without a dude “guarding” them. Man, that’s crazy. I think about how my daughters could still be sold into sexual slavery or human trafficking in other parts of the world. There is so much I am thankful for. I even turned to the Jews, how they overcame the holocost, when I’d get depressed sometimes. Opportunity is hard, but it’s there. Sexism still exists, my mama taught me that, but my daughters will have so much more opportunity. God bless.
I once read 1984 because it was recommended to me years ago. In that book, they did stuff like “erase” the past, change things, and force people to not reflect or admit they could remember what really happened. Not cool.
The murals is beautiful. That’s all. Our whole past is beautiful, warts and all, we’ve grown so much in this country in such a short time.
Thank you Peta and Anon for your thoughtful comments.
Whitewashing history is very dangerous for the future. It’s imperative we learn from it, not pretend it didn’t happen, less we repeat our mistakes. I’m surprised that native Americans and African Americans find this offensive. Don’t they want everyone to know what really happened? The Jews set a good example with the education of the holocaust, despite being immensely painful, to prevent it from happening again. Rwanda. Serbia/ Croatia. Cultural Revolution. Rape of Nanking. Khmer Rouge. Rohinga. One could go on about all the atrocities that have occurred that are being whitewashed, erased from history books or rewritten. We have a chance here to preserve this and educate the future leaders of our world. Don’t throw it away.
What a hot mess. Give you kudos Sarah B for producing a pretty balanced background on this. Most articles don’t even have photos to the 1970’s response murals. In the long run, students have to walk by the Arnautoff murals, and no one should have to be required to have that in their face if it is taken as disturbing.
Interesting that Victor Arnautoff chose to return to live in the USSR in 1963. He must have gotten tired of the BS. Some of other work is in Coit Tower and the Presidio.
Please do not whitewash our history. It’s dangerous not to have these images of our history to learn from. We need to keep examples of our past to save our future.
The murals are beautiful.
Does SFUSD also plan to destroy the other two other murals created in the 1970’s?
Dewey Crumpler’s mural depicts an Egyptian Pharaoh and hieroglyphics. Could their depiction trigger Jewish students recalling their peoples centuries of bondage in Egyptian slavery? What about the inclusion of Pancho Villa? Perhaps the living descendants of those he killed might object to his glorification?
Of course I’m joking. But the fact that the SFUSD would actually destroy a work of art is no joke. All of mankind’s artistic expression risks being destroyed by those deeming it offensive sometime in the future. Nazi destruction of modern art and the 1,500 year old Buddha statues blown up by the Taliban come to mind.
Obliterating art is not the way to address depictions of injustices and oppression, education is. Perhaps the SFUSD can find a way to contextualize the murals to give the students at Washington High a better understanding of our nations complex and conflicted history. Perhaps the students could be involved in the effort…
The murals are beautiful and it depicts the true history of our Country. Despite all the injustices done to native Americans and blacks, it IS our history and we shouldn’t whitewash it. Leave the murals as they are, but add explanatory signage for students and the pubic.
PETA COOPER – Excellent.
Those murals are amazing and belong in a museum. Why would anyone want them removed or destroyed, they are art. I thought only fascists destroyed works of art. It’s hard to believe the painter a persecuted Russian immigrant in 1936 would create something offensive and city officials would let him do it. San Francisco and the Bay Area have a long racist history. The deed to my home states my home can not be sold to any Negros, Jews or Chinese. Be glad you live in America/California where our courts are treating everyone with equality. Destroying a piece of art which depicts the past only allows future generations to forget the past and the struggles which were fought to get equality for everyone.
Upon learning that Christopher Columbus did not “discover America,” and that George Washington was a slave owner, I became a history major precisely to confront the mythological narratives of our nation’s founding. These murals were produced in the same spirit of confronting painful realities. The great murals of Diego Rivera depict Mexican history with much more graphic scenes of exploitation of native peoples by the Spanish colonizers. Yet his murals are cherished by the Mexican people as a beacon of truth. The Arnautoff murals do not glorify slavery and genocide, but effectively depict it as a fact of our history. Do not destroy them, but preserve them. For those who find it painful to walk by the murals daily, (and I in no way belittle that experience) please give them a break by providing alternate passageways. One more thing, it is the name of the school that glorifies the exploitation of black and native peoples. Please consider striking George Washington from the name and replacing it with a justice fighter like Thaddeus Stevens, or Ida B. Wells.
I want to encourage the members of the School Board to approach this question slowly and with an open mind, because if the murals were “disappeared” they could not be recovered. It is important to know that some African-American and Native American students find the murals offensive: but as students at George Washington high school, it’s essential to know who George Washington was. Like all students, they bring certain preconceptions, certain lessons learned about “trigger” art–and what is desperately needed in response is education. Not at all a white-washing of dreadful events, but an in-depth study of what Art does, what it can do, how to read the messages in social Art, what the purposes of the WPA were, who Arnautoff was, etc. One can have an uneducated reaction or an educated reaction. The school is the ideal place to educate all ethnic/racial groups about the good and the bad of American history. These murals beg for discussion, which can be transformative for all students. Please don’t leave them with nothing but the preconceptions that would make them complicit with book-burners. Help them learn how to take a longer, less “identity-politics” perspective. Everyone will benefit by experiencing these magnificent murals and knowing what they mean.
It’s sad to me that the Board of Education can’t see that this is a huge educational opportunity. Washington *was* a slave owner, and Native Americans *were* slaughtered as a result of the westward expansion he promoted. To be honest, I’m more triggered by reports of what SCOTUS & Trump are doing to our country in the here & now than by non-glamourizing mural at a school. Add some plaques explaining the author, the circumstances, and leave the art in place.
Peta Cooper! What you said! I could only say it more crudely, because this does anger me.
School is for education. The murals are a major opportunity for education on both history and art. It would be utterly grotesque to destroy or even hide them.
I am curious if there are any women depicted anywhere in this mural series? Has that been a topic of discussion?
It’s time we discuss American History. Thanks to DNA testing and Henry Louis Gates Jr/Finding Your Roots we now know most African-Americans are 25% white and all African-European-Americans have black ancestors. And it was the first illegal immigrants in 1492 who cheated and lied to the native Americans. These early illegal immigrants killed 100 native Americans. (Far worse than Hitler’s war.)
A school is an instauration for learning. This mural by a Russian immigrant is a teaching opportunity. If anything is shows how victors write and remember history.
Thank you for this blog post regarding the murals.
I think that interpreting these murals as depictions of racism and pro-genocidal action is not a full and nuanced understanding of what these murals are about. As you point out in your post, the artist, through the murals, depicts the fact that George Washington owned slaves and also the fact that the prevailing Imperialist American philosophy known as “Manifest Destiny” involved the slaughter of an entire people was actually extreme and controversial for its day. These facts were the history that the artist wanted teach the High School students who would view the murals down through the decades. (For a fact check, let us read the l history textbooks of the 1920s and 30s from a sample of high schools across the nation, and see how they tell the history of America and it’s first President).
The history lesson that we should be telling is the context in which these murals were painted.
The very fact that the US government (through the WPA) under President FDR would pay artists for their art on public works, without censorship, should be recognized. It certainly is not done today.
In addition, the art itself is important from the point of view of the history of San Francisco and its pre-beatnick leftist artistic community and their role in the painting of the murals in the Coit Tower and their role in the political struggle within the city. Plus the murals are important stylistic representations of the art from the art deco period and fit well within the architectural sensibilities of the High School itself (designed by San Franciscan Timothy Pflueger, a renowned art deco architect).
I do not know the history of this artist, but he doesn’t sound as though he supported slavery and the genocide of the Native American, quite the contrary.
Let us rise up against this proposed whitewash of important San Francisco art and history!
Absolutely don’t destroy, remove, paint over, or hide the murals. Their historical context, the 1930s, was one of the few periods in the US in which the government sponsored progressive art like this, and it should indicate that the artist – a member of persecuted minority himself – wanted precisely to show our history as it was (though represented graphically and thematically, not as a history textbook). It should not indicate that the artist was endorsing slavery or the elimination of the aboriginal people – far from it. The murals seem to be a pretty fair representation of historical reality, without sentimentalizing or sugarcoating. The brutality is plain enough to see, and any well-informed and thoughtful person should be able to draw the right conclusions.
By all means, leave a few informative plaques around to help with this. I’m truly sorry if some people feel offended by the murals, or uncomfortable around them, but they need to see them in another way. The murals are not to be compared to the heroicizing statues of Confederate generals erected all over the South. To shield or hide the disagreeable parts of the murals would be condescending – it would be to presume that the students of GWHS, and other viewers, are incapable of grasping the thing for what it is. We need more reminders of the terrible crimes of which this country is guilty – not fewer, for fear of hurting people’s sensibilities.
And speaking from the strictly artistic point of view – the murals are beautiful, luminous.
It is said that Queen Victoria, scandalized by the genitals on the classical Greek and Roman statuary, has the penises knocked off and replaced by fig leaves. The Nazis and the Soviets imposed rules for making art – something these people hated and had no sense of – and repressed the artists who didn’t conform. (They understood art only as propaganda.) A few years ago in Italy, prior to a state visit by Iran’s President Rouhani, officials had certain nude statues covered so as to not offend the visitor’s sensibility.
Around 1990 I met the woman who directed art acquisitions for AT&T’s corporate art collection, who lamented that she had to steer very clear of any work with possible religious connotations. She even had complaints about a painting in four panels, joined two-by-two (a very austere minimalist work), which was in lobby of the AT&T building in New York, because some people took the intersection of the four panels to be a crucifix. Clearly there’s not much you can do as an artist if you have to worry about who you might offend. Sometimes it’s an artist’s duty to shake people up.
By the way, George Washington is getting perhaps worse press than he deserves in this controversy over the murals. Although a slave-owner, he willed that his slaves be manumitted upon his wife’s death. Also, it’s not very well-known that Washington was among the very few of that time who had any consideration for native Americans at all. On the whole he was way ahead of most others of his time. The record is complicated, and not all to Washington’s credit, but those who are interested should read the following article from the New York Review of Books of April 5, 2018, a review by Susan Dunn, “Our Father, the President”, which addresses Colin G. Callaway’s book, The Indian World of George Washington, or look up the book.
P.S. – I looked better at Arnautoff’s life (Wiki) and saw that he was not Jewish (as I was presuming when I wrote that he was a member of a persecuted minority). I guess his profile as a leftist artist of the 1930s led me to suppose mistakenly, according to stereotype, that he was Jewish as well. (Shame on me.) But he was Russian Orthodox, the son of a priest, a cavalry officer who served the Tsar and fought with the White Russians against the forces of the Bolsheviks in Siberia. After the defeat of the Whites he was persona non grata in Russia, and went to China. After a few difficult years there he went to the US to study art in San Francisco. Then he went to Mexico and assisted Diego Rivera, the great muralist, who was well-known for his radical views. Arnautoff’s own views were getting fairly left-wing, to the point of joining the Communist Party. Later, when the country’s mood shifted to the right (e.g., McCarthyism), he had plenty of trouble on account of his political views. So, between the Bolsheviks in Russia and the witch-hunters in the US, you could definitely say he was persecuted – and even if you don’t consider him of an ethnic minority, he was certainly of a political minority.
Anyway, he was very aware of the evils of racism and the notion of “Manifest Destiny”.
Typo: the fourth paragraph above should read “had the penises”, not “has”.
Allen Schill I too was curious about Arnautoff’s life after reading students stated he was a racists. Arnautoff was taught by Diego Rivera, wasn’t he a minority? This destruction of the mural appears to be a modern day political act by people who are trying alter history.
Arnautoff’s life was all about a struggle for the oppressed. When he first arrived in San Francisco to study at the Academy of Art he was an outspoken leftist. He was taught by a Mexican. His first public commission in Palo Alto was controversial as is he work in Coit Tower. Arnautoff’s was professor at Stanford Professor for 20 years. This guy was persecuted by the United States government (HUAC) who tried to get him fired from Stanford for being a member of the communist party. The president of Stanford at the time refused to fire the professor and supported Arnautoff. I can’t find why Arnautoff left the United States in 1963 to return to Russia but I can only think it was because he was continually persecuted in the US. Remember what the world was like at that time. The Berlin Wall had just been built. America was thought to be the most powerful country in the US until the Soviet Union demonstrated the most powerful atomic bomb ever exploded and launched Sputnik. This was followed by first animal in space, first man in space, first probe to Venus. I could only think this must not have been a good time for someone from the Soviet Union to be living in the United States.
Before labeling artists and the artist’s work as racist and harmful, maybe we should lean about the artist and the message he was conveying to future generations.
I am in the “keep the murals, but put an explanatory sign” on it, or “add some additional murals” camp. I am very much against painting over it, removing it, or even moving it to a museum. The mural has historic value in and of itself, showing a time when the federal government (1930s) still believed in art’s cultural value and invested in it.
I get that the images are unsettling, or even disturbing. But anyone who wishes to look at human history in a realistic way is going to be unsettled or disturbed. The human story can be very ugly. The last thing we want to do is make it easier to forget that a hero of individual freedom, George Washington, could also be a slave holder at the same time, see the Other as some how less than human. That human ability to be both good and wicked needs to be illustrated. Nor do we want to forget that the “glorious” Westward march of America was completed at a profound human cost to Native Americans. This mural helps us remember the truth.
I challenge those who see these images as racist, somehow celebrating slavery and genocide. To the contrary, the artist was bravely pointing to the inglorious founding of our nation, back in the ’30s, back when the “right” way to make art was to whitewash this ugly history and engage in a rah-rah form of patriotism and jingoism. I genuinely question those students and adults who claim that students are “harmed” by these images. If that’s the case, then let’s not teach about slavery or genocide at all.
Keep the murals in place, and provide context to viewers. The impulse to ban, restrict or limit art is one to keep very far away from.
I graduated from GWHS in 1968. At that time and in prior years at Presidio JH we were taught that our founding fathers were slave owners and we discussed these issues in class. We also learned about westward expansion and the wonton murder of our native peoples. I ‘m so saddened that the SFSB has allowed the curriculum to be whitewashed and consequently bland. I stand with students who demand the truth .
With all that said I as an alum I do not want to see these murals removed for the simple reason ‘it offends’, I am far more offended that SFSB would prefer to cover up the truth of our nations history.
I have read all the comments and I find no one advocating for distruction so why is the board so bent on playcating to the minority complaint. You should be educating all students vis discussion and truth.
I’m curious if you teach your students that several native american tribes also practiced plantation slavery with black Africans and, in fact, did not free their slaves until many years after the emancipation proclamation.
Our history, good and bad, will not cease to exist because you toss literature and art down the memory hole. People so intellectually and emotionally infantile as this should be sent to therapy, and should be dictating what can and cannot be shown.