DC’s Department of Transportation will begin removing the mural and renaming the street Monday. The project will close parts of 16th Street NW for 6 to 8 weeks.
WASHINGTON, D.C., USA — DC’s Department of Transportation says the reconstruction of Black Lives Matter Plaza will start as soon as Monday. Parts of 16th Street Northwest will close. The project is expected to take six to eight weeks to complete.
DC Mayor Muriel Bowser announced the changes a day after a Republican Congressman from Georgia introduced a bill that threatened to withhold federal funding from the District if they didn’t rename the street.
Sunday, people gathered on the two-block stretch of 16th Street in Northwest DC to get one last look at Black Lives Matter Plaza.
Alvin Coleman drove from his home in Woodbridge to see this one last time.
“My wife and I, Doris, we got up early this morning, we ate breakfast and came out here,” said Coleman. “I just wish that it could stay, but the president wants it to go, so I have no choice, but I’m going to enjoy it while I can.”
The Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity’s Eastern Province also came out to celebrate this stretch of road and its meaning since it was renamed and repainted nearly five years ago.
“We choose to commemorate and uplift the message of resilience and solidarity that the mural represents,” said Richard B. Mattox, the Regional Director of the Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity.
“Whether the pavement says it or not, we’ll still be here,” said Marvin Burton Jr. The President of the Washington DC National Panhellenic Council. “We still matter and we still have a love for this country.”
That group wasn’t protesting the city’s removal of the mural, but hopes the message of Black Lives Matter Plaza carries on.
“I would be telling a story if I said I didn’t want this to stay and remain,” said Burton Jr. “More so as a reminder for us to always be aware of how we interact with each other, how we unify, how we make each other feel in this wonderful and diverse country.”
“We support the mayor, but we also support the legacy of this mural,” said Mattox.
