The Great Wall of Los Angeles is one of LA’s cultural landmarks and one of the country’s most respected and largest monuments to inter-racial harmony. Today SPARC continues to expand on the Great Wall. We are in the next phases of designing the remaining decades of the century, from 1960s to 2010s. 

The Great Wall is a landmark pictorial representation of the history of ethnic peoples of California from prehistoric times to the 1950’s, conceived by SPARC’S artistic director and founder Judy Baca. Begun in 1974 and completed over five summers, the Great Wall employed over 400 youth and their families from diverse social and economic backgrounds working with artists, oral historians, ethnologists, scholars, and hundreds of community members.

“We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable—but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words.” 
—Ursula K. Leguin

“We create possibility out of limitation, liberation out of violence and oppression, joy out of our grief ."by
—Kah Yangni

“And when we speak we are afraid
our words will not be heard
nor welcomed
but when we are silent
we are still afraid
So it is better to speak
remembering
we were never meant to survive.”
​​​—Audre Lorde, A Litany for Survival

"Love - compassion, unconditional, uncompromising - for human life, must become the transforming power of life, that overwhelms and forges faith. If God has touched us by faith, it is love and passion for life that we know that keeps challenging and transforming us."
—Reverend Lawson

"If you dare to pray such prayers and the Lord's prayer, then you must be prepared to go where you did not plan to go, and do what you did not plan to do, but you will be astonished at the life you discover."
—Reverend Lawson.