On March 10, 2025, the District of Columbia repainted Black Lives Matter Plaza and renamed it Liberty Plaza after being threatened with a cut in federal funds. A few days before, on March 3, 2025, Congress passed a bill stating: “This bill withholds certain highway funds from the District of Columbia (DC) unless DC removes the phrase Black Lives Matter from the portion of 16th Street NW that is between H Street NW and K Street NW (currently designated as Black Lives Matter Plaza) and redesignates the street as Liberty Plaza. In addition, DC must remove the phrase from websites, documents, and other materials which are under its jurisdiction.” It specifically withholds funding of the annual Highway Trust Fund apportionment for D.C. on the first day of each fiscal year in which the city doesn’t comply.
D.C. had just 60 days to agree to these demands before its funds were cut. Action was taken quickly by the city, and according to NBC Washington News, the removal cost D.C. taxpayers $610,000. This came as a surprise to many because of the history of not just the mural, but the phrase as well. The phrase, “Black Lives Matter,” was coined in 2013 by Black organizers Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi following the death of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed, 17-year-old Black male who was shot and killed in his neighborhood. The gunman, George Zimmerman, had followed the boy on his way home from the convenience store before shooting him.
The following year, the phrase gained popularity again following the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, two unarmed Black males killed by police brutality, which is, according to Oxford Languages, “The use of excessive and unjustified force by the police when dealing with members of the public.” On July 17, Garner was put in a chokehold and suffocated by policeman Daniel Pantaleo following an interrogation about selling cigarettes. Brown, a teen at the time of his death, was killed when police officer Darren Wilson shot him unprovoked on Aug. 9.
Black Lives Matter gained traction again six years later after the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. Taylor was shot eight times during a police raid on March 13 after officers entered her home unannounced. Just two months later, Floyd was killed due to a lack of oxygen, on camera, after Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin pressed a knee against his neck for about nine minutes on May 25. Both were unarmed.
While these were not the only unarmed Black people killed by police brutality or racial profiling, they did inspire African Americans to begin protesting the injustice against their race. The perpetrators involved in these crimes weren’t brought to justice until many years later, if at all.
According to the 2020 Police Violence Report, 81 unarmed U.S. citizens were killed by police; 46 of them were people of color. Black people were found more likely to be killed and more likely to be unarmed, but less likely to be threatening someone when killed. In 2020, Black people only made up 13% of the population, yet made up 28% of police killings. This information, along with the killings themselves, was a big reason why the African American community pushed for a Black Lives Matter mural in the nation’s capital. The mural was painted on July 5, 2020, by independent artists in under 24 hours following a peaceful protest turned violent by the Washington, D.C. federal police force. Once the mural was completed and recognized nationally, it was transformed into the Black Lives Matter Plaza.
EMU has its own Black Lives Matter mural, painted by the Black Student Alliance (BSA) in 2020. Although the students who painted it have graduated, BSA’s advisor, Celeste R. Thomas, was part of the organization process. Thomas, the Director of Multicultural Student Services, joined the EMU community back in 2014. Along with being the BSA advisor, she is also the Latinx Student Alliance (LSA) and Gospel Choir advisor, as well as a Coachlink coach. She says that when she came to EMU, there was no art dedicated to anyone who looked any shade of Brown or Black. “Now there is some, but it’s few and far between.”
However, after the events in 2020, students wanted to see a change. With the rise in violence, Thomas stated that EMU needed to make Black students feel safe. “People were being killed in traffic, being stopped for traffic violations. It just seemed like week after week, that was happening. So because people who looked like them were being gunned down by the police, the students related.” The timing of these changes was important as well. “It [EMU’s mural painting] was at the inception of the Black Lives Matter movement and organization, so we felt like on campus, we needed to have some representation. We wanted them [Black students] to feel safe and to feel like they mattered.”
Safety wasn’t just a faculty concern; Students began taking matters into their own hands. In addition to the mural, students compiled a list of demands for the university to support them as students of color, including that students take a class on equity, diversity, and related topics. Thomas states that this became the Power, Systems, and Justice class. She says their argument for this was that “students should not be graduating from college if they don’t have any cultural competence.”
Students also argued, “We can’t be a social justice university and not support and believe that Black Lives Matter.” While the students who fought for these changes are no longer at EMU, current students believe the changes made were significant. Jelanie Morgan (‘27) believes that the EMU mural represents “Not just Black lives, but people of color. They have something they can get behind that helps them feel seen, heard, and felt like they’re cared for.”
Another student, Janaria Kenreich (‘27), believes the mural is the school’s way of saying, “Hey, this is what we stand for. We don’t discriminate, we don’t leave people out. We are for everybody.”
While EMU’s mural continues to stand tall, the erasure of the Black Lives Matter Plaza only strengthens its importance.
