'Silence is not an option': service, calls for action ignite Baton Rouge area on MLK Day

Colorful, provocative images took shape on the exteriors of buildings along Scenic Highway by late Monday, the work of a diverse and dedicated group of artists, as well as hundreds of Baton Rouge volunteers.

The images depict the legacy of the civil rights movement: the 1953 Baton Rouge bus boycott, a portrait of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. And, there were images from a more recent history: a black woman confronting a police officer in riot gear and grieving mothers over the tombstones marked for Alton Sterling, a black man shot by white Baton Rouge Police officers, and Bryant "BJ" Lee Jr., the McKinley High School quarterback fatally shot during 2017, a year marred by a record number of homicides in Baton Rouge.

"We curated this," said Perry Brooks, a Scotlandville-based artist with the The A-bomb, an arts organization, and one of about 20 people who worked on the MLK project. "I thought we better have more powerful images. … We need to know our history."

Part of a four-day volunteer effort for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the paintings, paired with general cleanup efforts, were aimed at revitalizing the Scotlandville area, an historic predominately-black neighborhood in north Baton Rouge.

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