project overview

Heritage Trail: Memphis Heritage Trail Mural

This six-story-tall artwork is part of the Memphis Heritage Trail project, and is a collaboration between two artists with Memphis ties: Derrick Dent and Michael Roy, aka Birdcap. The project features people and scenes from black history in downtown Memphis.

Dent developed the concept for the mural and conducted extensive research, focusing specifically on events that have ties to or took place in downtown Memphis.

The top of the mural depicts President’s Island Contraband camps, which was once home to black refugees and recently freed slaves fleeing north Mississippi. The settlements were known as contraband camps. This imagery also echoes a traditional manger scene, a reference to the Christian faith that is important in many African American communities. Moving down, we see a depiction of Beale Street Baptist Church: the first brick church built for use by African Americans in the U.S., and an important gathering place for newly freed slaves. Third, three soldiers in uniform honor the black heroes who fought in the Civil War, making up about 10 percent of the Union Army.

On the bottom left of the soldiers is Robert Church Auditorium’s exterior and a portrait of Robert R. Church himself. Considered the first black millionaire in the U.S., he was a businessman and philanthropist that built a park and auditorium for African Americans. Ida B. Wells stands to Church’s right, holding literature about lynchings in Memphis. The focus of the mural, Wells was an important suffragette, anti-lynching activist, and journalist who lived, taught, and worked in Memphis. Using the basement of Beale Street Baptist Church as her home base, she published a newspaper that revealed the reality of racial violence in Memphis and across the U.S.

Continuing down on Well’s lower right, a car drives down Beale Street, representing the Cotton Makers Jubilee Parade. This event, which had its heyday in the 1940s-50s, was an important community gathering for black Memphians. Kings Palace Cafe was a downtown venue open during that time. See a whole collection of photos from Memphis photographer Ernest Withers here.

The stage to the lower right is the Interior of Church Auditorium, a site of numerous performances by notable musicians like W.C. Handy.

Finally, at the very bottom of the mural, we see a contemporary family and Mulberry Street houses. This is a composite image of modern-day Memphians which Birdcap says was, “loosely based on personal sketches and photos of downtown residents”. The houses in the background are buildings on Mulberry Street, which was a street home to numerous thriving black businesses until the end of the 60s.

about the artists

MICHAEL ROY (BIRDCAP)

Michael Roy is a contemporary muralist and illustrator working under the moniker Birdcap. Born during the Reagan administration in an indistinct small town in Mississippi, Roy now lives out of his suitcase, painting murals from city to city with installed works in places as far flung as Tokyo and New York. His work is inspired by an international hodgepodge of religious and mythological themes in combination with a dedicated nostalgia for the Saturday morning cartoons of his childhood. Taking visual and narrative cues from the places he travels, Roy’s work builds on the cultural accumulation of a transient life. Roy enjoys long walks in congested cities, pineapples, and daydreaming about an alternate reality in which he is a rapper.

Roy is a graduate of the studio arts program at Memphis College of Art.

For additional information see Michael Roy's website.

Derrick Dent

Derrick Dent is a freelance illustrator based in Brooklyn, NY; born and raised in Memphis, TN. He specializes in editorial illustration, with an emphasis in portraiture, storyboarding and comics.

Dent is also a graduate of Memphis College of Art.