72Black June Pride

The whole side of the building, end to end, in blocks of solid colour with heavy black outlines and no shading anywhere: oxblood, kelly green, navy, mustard, purple. Between the figures, panels of pure pattern — orange-and-blue harlequin diamonds, concentric rings, dots, zigzags — so the wall keeps a beat going even where nobody is standing.

And on it, dancing: a man thrown back with both arms up, a woman in a headwrap with her hands raised, two figures in white dresses with gold hoop earrings mid-turn, a fifth low to the ground. Flat, angular, monumental. If it puts you in mind of Jacob Lawrence, that is the tradition it is working in, and it is working in it confidently.

The title is painted right on the wall in gold serif capitals, in quotation marks, with the year and the credits underneath: "BLACK JUNE PRIDE", 2023, ARTIST CHESLEY SMITH. Smith has been painting this avenue for a long time. In 2005 he painted three walls along Elm for an initiative called Color Us Proud, run by NeighborWorks with Cultural Arts of Waco to bring — in their words — renewed colour, pride and cultural vibrancy to the street: Each One Reach One Teach One at 800 Elm, Giving Praise: Black Pride at 818, and a Peace Mural at 912. Samuel and Kim Torres painted It Takes a Village at 808 in the same year and the same project.

Eighteen years later the credits on this wall read: artist Chesley Smith, assistance from Doreen Ravenscroft, Sam and Kim Torres, and Tyler VanSyckle. Same avenue, same people, one generation on. And if Each One Reach One Teach One sounds familiar, it is because it is painted onto the street signs inside the Tree of Life mural three stops back. This avenue quotes itself.