RACINE, Wis. (SPECTRUM NEWS)- A petition calling on Racine city officials to allow the words Black Humanity Matters to be painted in front of the Racine County Courthouse now has more than 2,200 signatures.
Scott Terry is the man who created it. He is an artist and owns an art gallery in Racine. He is also a community activist and has attended multiple rallies in Racine, in support of ending police brutality against African Americans.
“The short-game is the marches and the protests, but the long-game is the strategy behind affecting policy and affecting change in the board rooms, in the court rooms, in elections,” Terry says. “It’s going to take an army because we didn’t get here overnight.”
The petition is asking for that phrase to be painted in yellow letters, spanning from 7th Street to 8th Street between the courthouse and the county jail.
“There has been more trauma between the Racine County Jail and the decisions made behind me in this courthouse more so than anywhere in the City of Racine,” Terry says.
He says he had no idea the petition would garner so many signatures.
“I was happy to have just 100 signatures and I got that, but I noticed it just kept getting higher and higher and higher,” Terry says.
Alderwoman Natalia Taft has supported sponsoring the mural, once Terry submits an official proposal to her. The city clerk would then have to refer the proposal to a committee, in this case, likely Public Works. If the committee approves it, it moves on to the Common Council for a final vote. The next full Common Council meeting is in July.
Terry says Phase 2 of the project is to build a memorial sculpture in front of the county jail, commemorating black lives lost to police brutality.
“It’s going to be a physical sculpture and a garden around that with some benches,” he says. “The goal is to have it be a place of reflection and peace.”
Terry says he is working with local artists to work on both projects. He says he wants the mural painting to be a community-wide effort.
“We want the community involved in doing this and in actually painting the mural,” he says.