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Arizona Mural Stirs Race Debate
School officials reverse decision to lighten boy's face.
June 11, 2010— -- In Prescott, Ariz., a school mural designed to encourage children to "go green" in their choice of transportation has had some unintended consequences: It's led to heated discussions about race.
The Miller Valley Elementary School sits on the corner of a busy intersection in Prescott, where the majority of residents are white. On one wall is "Go on Green," a mural commissioned by school authorities, depicting four schoolchildren riding their bikes or walking to escape the urban environment and embrace nature.
One child, painted after a real-life student named Mario, is Hispanic.
R.E. Wall, the director of Prescott's Downtown Mural Project, led the Mural Mice corps of artists to paint the mural. Once it was finished, school officials asked him to "lighten" the shadows on Mario's face.
Principal Jeff Lane, part of the school's mural committee, told ABCNews.com, they "felt there were a few changes that needed to be done. They felt from across the street the shadows looked really dark, so they asked to have those lightened up."
Wall was reluctant. "From an artistic point of view if you lighten up the shadow you have to lighten up the face as well and that leads to a more Caucasian-looking person," he said. "We knew right off that this wasn't something that we wanted to do because this would distract from the child that was in the photograph."
He said he procrastinated in altering the mural until the committee came to him and said he had to do it.
The Mural Mice didn't begin lightening the mural until May 30, three to four weeks after they were originally asked. "We felt a weird feeling about [repainting]," Wall said. "We stepped off the scaffolding, walked away for a couple of days and then the media storm took place."
Local media coverage went viral. Charges of racism were lobbed at school officials.
Steve Blair, a city councilman for Prescott, was fired from his radio job at KYCA-AM for speaking out against the mural.
On Saturday, a crowd of more than 300 showed up to the campus to protest the lightening of the mural.
So school officials asked Wall and his artists to "return the mural to its original intent."
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