“Lemiert Park and Crenshaw Boulevard are one of the last standing black neighborhoods in Los Angeles, when every other area is already being gentrified,” said artist Enkone Goodall, standing before his mural on Crenshaw.

Enkone’s work is part of a group mural officially titled Our Mighty Contribution, and more popularly known as The Crenshaw Wall or The Great Wall of Crenshaw.

Painted in 2001 by the art collective Rockin’ The Nation, the mural runs along Crenshaw Boulevard as a chronological, historical timeline of black culture, featuring everyone from Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King, Jr. to Dizzy Gillespie and Jimi Hendrix. 

As such, the mural is inherently a conversation starter. But after swastikas appeared on Enkone’s portion, depicting four female Black Panthers, that conversation became more volatile.

The incident sparked outcry from local residents who have long called for the mural to receive official historical preservation status, and have registered their discontent at town halls over the police’s inability to identify any suspects to date. The incident is being investigated as a hate crime.

“We painted this mural to give the people a sense of pride,” Enkone tells me. In this interview, he speaks to his response, that of the community, and what this art work, in this neighborhood, signifies.