The Murder of Crows: “The Ending of Jim Crow” segment of the Great Wall of LA depicts crows flying over the San Fernando Valley carrying segregational signage in contrast to the Memphis Sanitation Workers who are carrying the famous “I AM A MAN” signs. The crows are a visual metaphor of the Jim Crow laws which will continue to appear in later segments of the Great Wall to symbolize the fact that segregation and discrimination has never really ended. 

The Memphis Sanitation Workers strike of 1968 came about as a response to the death of two garbage collectors who were crushed to death by a malfunctioning sanitation truck on February 1st,1968 and the city’s neglect of its sanitation workers. Following the incident, supported by Jerry Wurf, president of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), 1,300 sanitation workers went on strike to protest for better safety standards and wages. On February 24, the Community on the Move for Equality (COME) was formed by 150 local ministers under the guidance of Reverend James Lawson. Under Lawson’s leadership the group used nonviolent disobedience to gain attention to the struggle. In a speech, Lawson encouraged the workers saying “[f]or at the heart of racism is the idea that a man is not a man, that a person is not a person…You are human beings. You are men. You deserve dignity.” This idea encapsulates the strike’s famous  “I AM A MAN” signage. Lawson asked Martin Luther King Jr. to join the strike. It was during Dr. King’s visit to the Memphis Sanitation Strike that he was assassinated at Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee.

The Jim Crow laws also existed and maintained segregation in California. In addition to Black Americans, Asian Americans, Mexican Americans and others racialized as non-white were prohibited from accessing public facilities and particular establishments. California had more Jim Crow Laws than most Southern States, many of which specifically targeted Chinese populations. Some of California’s Jim Crow laws are featured in the mural, written beneath the feet of the Sanitation Workers.. 

In an interview with SPARC, Reverend James Lawson describes the pulling down of segregational signage as an impactful visual of the dismantling of the Jim Crow Laws in the late 50’s and early 60’s. The dismantling of Jim Crow laws on a national scale came about with the Supreme Court ruling in Brown v Board of Education (1954) that declared segregation in schools unconstitutional. The dismantling of these laws was furthered through the 1960s with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968.  Lawson describes the coming down of segregational signage and laws demonstrated a major victory of the Civil Rights Movement.

Writer and Civil Rights activist Michelle Alexander argues in her book The New Jim Crow that Jim Crow laws that have maintained the segregation of racial populations in the U.S. never really ended. Instead, they have taken the shape of mass incarceration that has targeted racial minorities and working class communities for legalized discrimination, political disenfranchisement and redistricting, exclusion from juries etc. There are important limits to this analogy that she points out including the fact that whites are also victims of mass incarceration, where they may not have been subject to Jim Crow Laws from previous decades. Black Americans have also supported ‘get tough’ policies that are part of our current system of mass incarceration.