The 9th grade class took a field trip to see The Freedom Wall for an interdisciplinary project with their WNY History class and Arts Eye class. The Freedom Wall is located at the corner of Michigan Avenue and East Ferry Street and was commissioned in 2017 by the Albright-Knox Art Gallery Public Art Initiative and the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority.

This location is the entrance into the Michigan Street African American Heritage Corridor: a nexus of the city’s deeply rooted African American history. It marks the intersection of the honorary Richard Allen and Harriet Tubman Ways, and it is home to Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church (Bethel AME). Organized in 1831, Bethel AME is Buffalo’s oldest black religious institution and served as a critical station on the Underground Railroad.

The museum's Public Art Initiative, in collaboration with the Michigan Street African-American Heritage Corridor and neighborhood stakeholders, envisioned this mural as a way to celebrate our nation’s historic and ongoing struggles for political and social equality, including the formative and lasting contributions of local leaders to this cause. With support from the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority (NFTA), the large concrete wall surrounding the NFTA’s Cold Spring Bus Maintenance Depot has been transformed into portraits of twenty-eight notable civil rights leaders from America’s past and present.

Read more about The Freedom Wall here.