Digitizing Hannah Hall Murals at Texas Southern University

Jesse Sifuentes' mural, titled Family Scene, emphasizes the importance of the family unit. His mural is painted in a geometric style, and features multiple generations of a family posed in different embraces. To the left, mothers and daughters hug each other, with a deceased grandmother hovering above with angel wings. Towards the middle of the mural there is another family facing away from the viewer. Below this group, a few turtles walk across the scene. There is also a serpent sneaking towards the foreground at the bottom of the mural. On the right, children and grandparents embrace while a tree extends over their shoulders towards the middle of the painting.

Sifuentes' mural's subject matter is a reflection of his experience learning under John T. Biggers. Sifuentes says that Dr. Biggers placed a strong emphasis on the significance of the family, and that this was influential on his mural. Sifuentes also borrows from Biggers' visual language in using turtles or tortoises to symbolize longevity and wisdom. He relates the turtles to the elders depicted in the painting to tie in how elders hand down knowledge, oral histories, and cultures to subsequent generations. The artist also includes crops like corn and pumpkin, both of which are significant in Mexican culinary tradition. He also chose to include a serpent to signify the hidden threats to the stability and unity of any family.

Murals are a special medium for Sifuentes. In his own words, “murals are the pen to artists,” but they also, unlike pieces held in private collections, “belong to the public.” Years after he painted this mural as a student, Jesse Sifuentes became an art professor at Texas Southern University. He taught a variety of courses including ceramics, sculpture, and mural painting up until his retirement in 2022.

Henry Gaston Michaux's mural depicts the negative and grueling effects of war across three panels. In the foreground of the left panel, a terrified mother huddles with her children. Behind them are soldiers, lines of corpses, and scenes of urban devastation. The middle panel displays several shirtless and emaciated figures desperately digging through the trash for their next meal. The right panel depicts a streaming line of refugees fleeing the violence of the war. The right side of the mural shows a stark contrast of environment, depicting a sprawling field with three workers tilling the land.

Michaux was a veteran and this mural was a reflection of what he saw while in combat. Michaux, along with many other students at this time, was likely able to study at TSU in part thanks to the G.I. Bill. Michaux was a favorite student of Dr. Biggers and painted this mural during his freshman year, having been granted special permission based on his impressive showing in a drawing class. After graduating from Texas Southern, Michaux went on to teach art at several universities, including HBCUs Southern University, North Carolina Central University, and South Carolina State University.

Abe Washington's mural traces a detailed timeline of progress for Black people in the United States from the left to the right of the painting. It begins with a group of hooded Klansmen burning a church and lynching two Black men. Further right, a missionary holds books and an enslaved family learns to read. Above their heads, a group of Union soldiers hold torches and march forward. Towards the center of the mural, a Black woman teaches a pair of children to read; behind them, another woman washes clothing in front of a large, but crumbling, plantation house. Next, a white teacher instructs a group of Black children; the words “EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION” are written on their chalkboard, below a small portrait of President Abraham Lincoln. To the right, Booker T. Washington stands prominently at a podium, lecturing to a diverse crowd, as a scroll reading “CAST DOWN YOUR BUCKETS WHERE YOU ARE” tumbles down. At the far right, a variety of Black professionals, including a judge, a doctor, scientists, and an architect, are pictured at work in their respective fields.

Washington's mural presents a linear narrative of progress for Black Americans out of slavery into the industrial 1950s. It also emphasizes education as the key factor in advancing Black interests and rights. Booker T. Washington, the founder of the Tuskegee Institute, believed education and accommodation were needed for racial equality to be achieved. He articulated his vision in his 1895 “Atlanta Compromise” speech. Abe Washington set out, in his own words, to illustrate “the story of Black people's ambition in the South and the things that influenced their lives.” When he returned to Texas Southern's campus in 2015, he expressed “hope that we can all keep our eyes on the prize.”

Brenda Lacy's mural showcases an exploration of homes from various civilizations, spanning back to the Mayan era. The artwork features an array of dwellings including painted huts, pyramids, Somba houses from Benin, and more. The color palette is warm and inviting, with a range of sandy brown tones, while the blue tones in the night sky capture the soft glow of a full moon. In the heart of the moon, Lacy incorporates a basket of eggs, a nod to folklore that symbolizes the birth and creation of new life across the land. This is also known as the “egg moon,” highlighting the mural's themes of renewal and continuity.

Lacy's work delves into themes such as home, womanhood, birth, and protection, drawing parallels between the concept of home and the nurturing aspects of motherhood. Although the clustered homes vary greatly in architectural style, they share a common purpose: to provide shelter and safety. At the center of the mural Lacy has incorporated a depiction of a terracotta sculpture she created for a ceramics class at Texas Southern University. The physical terracotta work is decorated with spirals and rolled balls of clay, among the signature embellishments used by students of Professor Carroll Harris Simms.

Bertram Samples' mural, My Life After the Death of My Mother, features three layers. Samples painted a younger version of himself, asleep on a yellow and red checked table decorated with green birds and plants in the middle of the composition. To the artist's left is a small gray bird and on his right is a slightly cracked egg. In the foreground, there is a rooster surrounded by corn, alongside fetuses at various stages of development. Behind, and overlapping with, Samples' head is a clock that gradually combines with two small dogs. Behind the clocks is a window with six picture panes. In the upper and lower left frames, the artist holds his mother's hand on her deathbed. Above his head, a marionette and police officer's face loom menacingly. In the upper middle frame, a teenaged Samples is shirtless and sitting on a truck with his fist raised. The upper right frame shows teenaged Samples sitting in a tree, while below him a younger version relaxes in the grass next to a dog.

Bertram Samples' mural captures the essence of his experiences as a young Black man in Houston. The mural unfolds like a dream, with each panel revealing a constellation of scenes from Samples' youth. The right panes depict a harmonious coexistence with nature and animals—a reflection of Samples' memories growing up in Houston's Fifth Ward with his grandparents. Contrastingly, the left panes delve into the harsh realities of Samples' experiences, unveiling the struggles of racism in the South and the loss of his mother. Yet, amidst the turmoil, Samples has described feeling an outside protective force that carried him through the challenging times of his early adulthood. The clocks in the mural symbolize the shift between worlds—between childhood and adulthood, innocence and maturity.

The Rape of Mother Nature was created by Earl S. Jones during his time as an art student at Texas Southern University in 1978. Jones' mural employs a unique blend of abstract and surrealist techniques, using geometric shapes and an almost cubist composition. The backdrop features elements of industrialization, with an oil derrick to the left and power plant exhaust stacks emitting toxic fumes. At the center right of the mural is the figure of Mother Nature as a naked woman, ensnared by a twisted rope or pipe which leaks sewage. Her expression evokes a sense of silent suffering in the face of environmental degradation. Behind her is a glimpse of a faded field of crops—perhaps a memory of the land's agricultural past. Mother Nature's figure on the right is symbolically a tree with its branches sawn off. Yet, Jones also motions towards hope: at the bottom of the mural, a small green plant symbolizes new life, and a fetal figure nestled within her stomach represents the potential for regeneration.

In 1973, Middle Eastern oil-producing countries imposed an embargo on the United States. In Houston, private oil companies seized the opportunity to increase their investments, leading to a surge in oil production across Texas. Houston emerged as a central hub for the oil business, attracting a wave of new workers and irrevocably altering the landscape. Earl Jones's latest artistic endeavor involves crafting wooden sculptures in Galveston, Texas, contributing his creative vision to the transformation of fallen trees in the East End Historic District into beautiful works of art.

Kermit Oliver's mural consists of two sections. One section features a man while the other is a woman looking upwards, with a child looking at her. The figures are painted using cross-hatching, where multiple layers of intersecting lines overlap to develop tone and shading. Oliver, heeding Dr. Biggers' instructions, also incorporates the building's architecture into his mural. In both panels, the light source comes from above, just as it does in Hannah Hall, lending the appearance of the figures standing in the wall as part of the building's environment. Some of the themes reflected in this mural are family, the mother-child bond, and looking onward despite life's troubles.

Oliver is one of only very few students who painted multiple murals in Hannah Hall. Dr. Biggers said that “he liked mural painting so much that on the third floor of Hannah Hall not only one mural but a mural wherever an empty space allowed.” By the time he graduated, Oliver had finished 6 murals of varying sizes and shapes. Oliver has become one of the most successful art graduates from Texas Southern University. He is the only American artist to design scarves for the French fashion house Hermès, creating several designs reflecting on the Americas, Texan flora and fauna, and indigenous peoples. In 2005, he was also the subject of a retrospective at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston titled, “Childs Odyssey: The Art of Kermit Oliver.”

Charles Ross's mural features a direct view of a Black family's rural home life. On the left side, two men in overalls and hats are ranching cattle alongside a country home. Staple Southern crops including yams, watermelons, and corn are stacked on the house's porch. In the middle of the porch, a group of four weary older men are sitting around a table playing a game of checkers. Above the men's heads is a greyish/beige panel—at the time of the mural's painting, a transom window that would have provided the visual effect of looking into the house. The interior of the house is visible in the background. The left side of the house is the kitchen, where two women wearing headwraps are at work: one cooking, the other churning butter. On the right side, a child, who is perhaps ill, is laying in a bed and being attended to by a woman wearing a dress.

Ross's mural may capture scenes reminiscent of the artist's upbringing. Charles Ross grew up in Huntsville, Texas, a semi-rural city north of Houston. This mural also speaks to gendered division of labor, marking a division between domestic labor as the domain of women and agricultural labor as the work of men. Ross's composition also visually places women and their work in the background of the mural—a clever reference to how women's labor is often pushed to the margins of society and goes unnoticed and unappreciated.

Cecil Taylor's mural tells a story of Houston's Third Ward. The left side shows a night scene in the neighborhood, featuring a variety of businesses and homes. At the lower left corner, there is an advertisement for a concert by the Harlem Stars, the original Houston-based recording group of the blues legend Big Mama Thornton, playing at Houston's City Auditorium. The artist depicts a bustling nightlife, with a pool hall, motel, and street vendors filling the scene. Towards the center, dawn is breaking in the neighborhood, as the streets fill with vendors and children, a biker, and pedestrians. In the right panel, the background features industrial buildings. Below, two people are fishing in a river, and in the foreground a man is asleep under a tree, holding a bottle of liquor.

Taylor was raised in the heart of Houston's Third Ward, a short walk from the iconic Blue Triangle Community Center and just a mile away from Texas Southern's campus. His mural shows the neighborhood he grew up in and the changes it underwent. Taylor would go on to become an art teacher in Port Arthur's Thomas Jefferson High School in 1969, and was one of the first Black teachers hired by the school district after integration. Speaking of Mr. Taylor's teaching, one student told the yearbook, “he really helps you draw.”

Bob Heliton's mural pays homage to music, sound, and live performance art. The mural is composed of intersecting and overlapping forms and figures. Heliton captures the scene of a jazz band and vocalists performing. A drummer, two trumpeters, one saxophonist, one bassist, and two singers are pictured in the rapture of performance. The intense facial expressions, especially the brow lines of the individual singers, pull the viewer into the scene; one can almost hear the music they are playing. The flow of Heliton's brushstrokes mimic the smooth rhythms of jazz. The warm toned palette reflects the feeling of a club scene, with a variety of colored stage lights over the band. The artist uses an acrylic wash to create a transparent look throughout the mural, mimicking a watercolor finish.

Multiple student muralists chose to paint themes of music and jazz to reflect the popularity and growth of this genre over time. Houston was home to many jazz spaces including the Eldorado Ballroom, a historic Third Ward venue which hosted jazz and blues legends as part of the so-called “Chitlin Circuit.” Heliton's use of intersecting and overlapping panels of color is reminiscent of, and perhaps inspired by, Aaron Douglas' painting style. Heliton's mural is the only one in Hannah Hall that stretches across two perpendicular walls, lending an extra element of depth to the composition.

Perrin “Lenny” Green's 2006 mural, Katrina Jazz, shows various scenes connected by floodwaters, drawing inspiration from the artist's personal experiences with Hurricane Katrina. In the upper left corner, a woman passes a swaddled baby to a man, referencing the biblical story of Moses being floated down the Nile River. Below them, a man clings to a sinking home. In the middle of the mural, a line of naked and chained enslaved people stand at an auction—alluding to New Orleans' history as the largest market for enslaved people in the United States in the 19th century. Under their feet, levees burst and water floods the city. To the right, a faceless figure covered in vines shakes a tambourine, likely depicting Mami Wata, a water deity venerated in various West African, Caribbean, and Creole religious traditions. In the upper right corner the skyline of New Orleans is visible, dominated by the silhouette of the Superdome.

After Katrina devastated New Orleans, Green was one of hundreds of thousands of residents who evacuated to Houston. He enrolled in art classes at Texas Southern and permanently left his mark on campus through this masterful mural. His story and his composition reflect the ongoing nature of the African and Afro-American diaspora. Sadly, Perrin “Lenny” Green passed away in November 2023 from an unexpected illness. He is remembered in New Orleans as a creative, talented, and kind member of the community.

James H. McNeil's Hannah Hall mural mimics the style of stained glass art that commonly appears in churches. The left panel features a shirtless Black man in front of a yellow cross. To the right, there is a small panel featuring a glass of wine, which in Christian theology represents the blood of Christ, and a lamb, a common symbol for Christ and his sacrifice. The middle panel shows three figures cowering at the bottom, while a dove soars overhead—possibly referencing the story of Noah's Ark. To the right, a young man, possibly the artist himself, closes his eyes and clasps his hands in prayer. In the rightmost panel, another shirtless Black man holds his hands up to his chest, with a book and cross behind him.

McNeil's mural subverts the usual subject matter of church stained glass. Relatively few churches feature Black people in their stained glass images. In the last few decades, some Black churches have sought to replace stained glass images of fair-skinned depictions of Jesus with images more representative of their congregations. Alumni who knew Mr. McNeil have said that it was a point of pride for him to have painted the first crucifix in the building. McNeil's mural had become damaged over the years, but was conserved in the last decade and is now in good condition for all to see.

John Davis' mural The Castration of Humanity is a reflection on the conflict between the past and future. On either side, large African statuettes, one male and one female, stand tall. Both are missing chunks from their genitalia; in their places are different pieces of technology. Towards the center of the mural, a group of Black women move gracefully throughout the scene, wearing white dresses and natural hairstyles. A tumbling scroll of the United States Constitution falls around their heads. Below their feet, a swirling American flag shrouds a Black man with his eyes closed. His head is surrounded by ringed planets and stars. There is also “damage” painted onto the mural, including streaks meant to imitate water damage, as well as faux cracking and flaking paint.

Davis' mural, painted with an airbrush, illustrates the tension between history & culture and technology & progress. Around the same time as he painted this mural, art students and faculty were unsuccessfully protesting for the protection of murals from construction and renovation. In one contemporary instance, several student murals were destroyed in order to install windows that looked into a new computer lab. Years later, the artist returned to Hannah Hall to see his mural, only to find that several large holes had been bored into his painting, the result of construction on the other side of the wall. At first he was horrified, but after some time, he felt instead that it was a fulfillment of the future he foresaw, further illustrating the prescience and significance of his powerful mural.

Erma Gordon's mural, Awakening, is a self-portrait of sorts. In the left panel of the mural, an oversized hand holds a man, woman, and child. The left side of the right panel shows the artist at work creating various types of artworks. She is seen creating a terracotta sculpture, throwing pots on a wheel, and weaving with a large loom. In the foreground, the artist's right profile is visible, and she holds a magnifying glass, which reveals a zoomed-in view of a shell or bone of some sort. In the upper right corner she is standing and drawing on an easel. A wispy, transparent fabric runs through all parts of the mural, tying them all together. This same motif appears in a self-portrait Gordon painted as a student.

Gordon's mural reflects on her time as an art student at Texas Southern University and pays homage to her various teachers. She paints herself creating a terracotta sculpture of a bison, which she completed as a student of Professor Carroll Harris Simms as a graduation requirement. Her terracotta is now proudly displayed in the University Museum at Texas Southern. Simms also instructed her on pottery and how to throw on a wheel. Gordon also shows herself weaving at a loom, a skill she would have learned under the instruction of Professor Theresa Allen. Lastly, her depiction of herself drawing, and this mural itself, are reflections of her time learning under Dr. John T. Biggers.

Doyle Burley's mural, “The Birth of Expression,” explores imagery of the cycle of life. He directs the audience's attention to the focal point by centering the silhouettes of women at the palm of a hand. The primary focus on women aligns with his instructor Dr. John Biggers, who celebrated Black women and their contributions to society through his paintings and murals. Biggers demanded that students care for details in their artwork, especially the realistic and meticulous depiction of hands. Burley embodies this practice with the large hand in the middle of the mural, including often neglected details like the loops and whorls of fingerprints. Continuing from the centerpoint, the silhouetted figures are seen in a round dance with extended arms, perhaps figuratively representing the circle of life.

The design extends out to either side with balanced images of night and day, the celestial and the earthly. The left, nighttime side includes the moon and a faceless man and woman. Towards the bottom, there is also an African mask and an intricately decorated drum or vessel. The right, daytime side depicts the sun, rain and lightning, in addition to a horse, bird, cotton, and corn. The moon and sun each embody human forms, with the moon as a woman with an afro made up of a constellation of stars, and the sun featuring an outstretched fist. Similar to John Biggers' seminal mural “The Web of Life,” which is housed in the University Museum at Texas Southern, Burley's mural reflects a sense of symmetry and interconnectedness, drawn together by a rainbow that arches through the entire mural.

This mural by an unknown student artist is a colorful work that encompasses various themes such as civil rights, political power, and family. The center focus is a shirtless Black man with his fist raised and a rope around his waist. Broken chains dangle from his wrists as he stands in front of a red and a purple flower. Behind him, greenery spreads throughout the rest of the mural. On the left side, behind the main figure's raised fist, two bales of cotton are stacked. In the lower left corner, a pair of plowhorses are working a field. Above the horses, a young woman in a checked shirt holds a book and looks upwards, with the words “One Day I'll Know I'll Be Free” written next to her. On the right side of the mural, four Black men, each dressed as a different profession, form a line from the top to the bottom of the composition. To the left of the men, sand tumbles down an hourglass.

This mural reflects themes of slavery, labor, and hope. The central figure, pictured with chains and a rope, appears to have broken free from his limitations. His upright posture and raised fist indicate a sense of purpose, liberation, and determination. The images of chains, livestock, and cotton bales visually reference slavery and its innumerable violences. On the right side, the hourglass depicts the passage of time, through which Black Americans have consistently strived and fought for opportunities, including the opening of professional fields that were previously segregated. The woman on the left side represents an ongoing aspiration and fight for freedom.

Charles Hatter's mural includes a full church choir with a variety of men, women, and children dressed in robes. The singers are pictured mid-song, with their mouths agape and hands clasped. The artist deliberately chose the location of his mural in order to depict the choir standing upon risers, arching over the doorway to the stairs. Dr. Biggers' instructed students to “relate the painting to the wall and not cut a hole in the wall with the painting,” and Hatter certainly heeded that direction. The square, white patch in the middle of the mural replaced an exit sign that was originally embedded in the wall; an archival photo taken by Dr. Biggers shows the original configuration. Light radiates out from where the exit sign once was, with a lamppost beneath it.

Charles Hatter was born in 1934 and grew up on a farm in the outskirts of Houston. He later served as a Private First Class in the US Army and likely attended Texas Southern with funding from the GI Bill. In this mural, the artist renders memories for those who have experienced the Black Southern church. Many Black church hymns, and gospel music as a whole, derive from enslaved peoples. While enslaved, music was a way to pass time and lift spirits during such harsh living conditions. Many of the same songs and hymns have been carried down from one generation to the next.

Earl Cleinmann's Hannah Hall mural was left unfinished by the artist. Cleinmann's design depicts multiple generations of Black women across three sections. In the left panel, a group of women wearing richly colored robes and headwraps gaze in different directions in a desert setting, with multiple moons lighting the scene. Several of the women's limbs are left unpainted, along with multiple of their robes and one woman's entire face. In the middle, a mother holds her baby against her bare chest, with a moon-like halo painted behind her head. In the right panel, two more women are pictured in the desert, with neither woman having any details of their faces painted.

Mural painting became part of the art curriculum at Texas Southern University thanks to the influence of Dr. John T. Biggers. Biggers taught students an iterative process where they would start with mural studies, then sketch on the wall using a grid technique, and finally paint in the sketch. Typically unfinished murals would be painted over and given to a new student. However, in this rare case, the partially completed mural was allowed to remain to provide viewers insights into the mural creation process. The mural also reflects a sense of past, present, and future: the left panel represents the past with ancestors, the middle depicts the present, and on the right the viewer sees the future as the women walk side-by-side into life's next steps.

Edward Mills' mural details a nation in turmoil. On the left side, the words “Injustice,” “Inequality,” and “Bigotry” are scrawled, with “Black Power” written just beneath. Faceless, white figures drag a Black woman who is holding a sign, while above, a mass of Black people appear to be protesting. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. appears with his fist raised, overlapping with a policeman holding a nightstick and German Shepherd. In the middle, an unknown white man's face looms large. In the foreground, a man either lifts or pulls down the American flag to reveal or conceal the ugly realities of racism, like the Ku Klux Klan. Chained Black people appear in the sole of the man's shoe, one of whose hands is nailed to a crucifix. On the right, a Black man extends his arm with a scale in his hand, and a Black boy holds a torch. The ghostly figures of John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy fade into the background. A small portrait of Stokely Carmichael/Kwame Ture breaks through the American flag.

Mills' mural reflects the tumultuous and radical period of his youth. He attended Texas Southern University during the late 1960s and 1970s, during the height of the Civil Rights era and Black Power movement. Stokely Carmichael/Kwame Ture spoke at TSU in spring 1967. Shortly after, the so-called “TSU Riots” occurred when Houston Police responded to a student protest by firing almost five thousand rounds of ammunition into a student dormitory and arresting 488 students. Multiple classmates of Mills describe him as a leader and talented artist. One classmate and artist, Barry Morris, calls Mills “the revolutionary.” Other classmates also say that Mills is color-blind, which may explain the muted palette of his masterful mural.