Fifth graders unveil community mural

by Juanita I.C. Traughber, communications director

Uplifting mural reflects past, present of Nashville. Students served as docents during the unveiling ceremony Saturday, May 19 in the 21st Avenue garage.
Students unveiled to the community a mural connecting University School of Nashville with the city’s prominent African-American communities. The ceremony from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. Saturday, May 19 in the 21st Avenue garage culminated the second iteration of Fifth Grade Social Studies Teacher Connie Fink’s civil rights unit, which takes students out of the classroom and into Nashville neighborhoods to learn about their historic struggles.

“Using the design thinking framework … students became aware of how change, that comes along with the rapid growth of a city, can benefit and negatively affect certain sectors of its population. Through this experience, students identified how the removal of people can over time impact the historical identity of a community,” Fink said.

Students took foot and bus tours of the Edgehill and Jefferson Street with personal tours by their longtime residents, businessmen, and advocates. They studied how policies and invisible barriers can segregate communities and change their landscapes. Students learned about infrastructure, urban development, and the impact of urban renewal on once thriving businesses and neighborhoods. They illustrated what they learned with the help of local artist-in-residence Joseph “doughjoe” Love III of the Norf Art Collective.

Doughjoe, artist of the murals at Green Field Bikes and Slim and Husky’s, said he is “adamant about conveying message” through his artwork paints and draws in his Edgehill home and studio.

“I was trying to guide them to ideas to be more positive because they were raw and emotional with images of wrecking balls and tearing down buildings. We used games and personify animals as a way to tell stories and to figure out how to fit in the past, present, and future while illustrating Nashville’s tough troubles.”

Using sketches from fifth graders, doughjoe pieced together a cohesive mural. Students in Art Teacher Emily Holt’s Contemporary Practice class of High School students painted the base layers, and some fifth graders stayed after school to paint wooden pieces affixed to the mural. Each fifth grader also had the opportunity to paint a flower on the soccer field.

Spanning the wall between the two 21st Avenue entrances to the school, the mural reflects on Nashville of the past and present. The south side of the mural includes Fort Negley. It includes a Monopoly-like board of green homes representing the new tall and skinny homes developed today as well as smaller red homes representing the red-lined district of the 1960s. And north of the homes sit between a soccer field with notable Nashvillians the Rev. Bill Barnes, PDS’ first African-American graduate Cassandra Teague Walker, and Edgehill Bike Club leader Terry Key dressed as USN Tigers and Edgehill custard polar bears playing soccer in a field of flowers. Walker punts a giant soccer ball bearing the words community, home, equality, diversity, hope, and empathy. The words represent “a Nashville for everyone,” students decided through a brainstorming session.

“After this project and being able to see what’s going on in Nashville, I can see things through different eyes and notice that I wasn’t able to not see before,” said Tessa Chamsky ’25 while painting a red house on wood in Holt’s classroom on a Monday afternoon. “I see giant, tall and skinny houses in the middle of a neighborhood that don’t fit and how they change the neighborhood. I learned how the interstate drained the life out of Jefferson Street so there were not as many places to dine out or to find entertainment. You can tell it use to be more colorful and full of culture.

This unit coincided with the reading of “Warriors Don’t Cry: A Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock’s Central High” in English class and a trip to the National Civil Rights Museum on Memphis. It also included visits by Tennessean opinion editor David Plazas and Little Rock Nine member Minnijean Brown Trickey as well as conversations with Jefferson Street United Merchants Partnership Executive Director and At-Large Councilwoman Sharon Hurt as well as other community leaders.

The unit also included a day at the Tennessee State Library & Archives for students to analyze dated maps, newspaper clippings, and black and white photographs from these neighborhoods.

For more information on the mural, visit http(s)://www.usn.org/4all.




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