In the summer of 2011, the “Historic Southside Mural” was created on the wall of the Murdoch Community Center—the site of the Dunbar School, a formerly segregated elementary school named after African American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar.
The historic Southside mural was designed to reflect the powerful heritage of Blacks, Chicano/Latino/as, and Native Americans who came to Flagstaff in the early-to mid-1900s to work on the railroads, in the restaurants, and in the lumber industry, and who faced racial exclusion and segregation. Rather than succumbing to oppression, the residents who were forced to live “south of Route 66” transformed the most diverse neighborhoods of the city—in the words of Lipsitz—into “wonderfully festive and celebratory spaces of mutuality, community, and solidarity".
At NAU, faculty, staff and students marveled as the mural progressed from June to September. When they returned to classes in the fall, many commented on their interest in seeing the daily changes that they could observe as they drove past. Many students and residents stopped by to chat, or to volunteer their services. Over the summer, a class of middle-school students studying at a “Freedom School” at the Murdoch Center took turns painting, and pledged to see that no one “tagged” or defaced the mural after it was finished. All these developments reflected the interest and impact of seeing local Black history highlighted in a graphic manner, in the city’s historic Southside—an area that had previously reflected little or no historical markers or images depicting African Americans.
I am Ricardo Guthrie, a scholar of Ethnic Studies, who utilizes academic training to teach the history and culture of Blacks, Latinos, Native Americans and Asian Americans. Located in Dinetah at 7,000 feet, Flagstaff is currently home to 70,000 residents. Because the city is actually a small town with a large university housed within it, I strive to make connections between community dynamics and the pedagogy of race and ethnic studies by creating neighborhood projects.
Working in collaboration with the Southside Community Association, I directed artists and community residents to produce a set of murals that reflect the collective memory of people of color, whose contributions were largely unknown to the general public. The Murdoch Community Center envisioned the mural project as a “community building” exercise—in line with its RARE assessment team’s report which called for community-engaged activities, signage, historical markers, and a mural depicting the Southside as a cultural destination, rather than merely a neighborhood passage to the more lucrative Downtown and Route 66 historic sites.
- Dr. Ricardo Guthrie
