White Out

Serge Toussaint’s dream of a Barack Obama/Martin Luther King Jr. partnership got scrubbed from his mural underneath I-95.

By Juan Carlos Rodriguez

Street artist Serge Toussaint created a mural of presidential candidate Barack Obama alongside Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. under the 62nd Street overpass.   The FDOT made him remove the image of Obama stating that the mural was more political statement than artistic expression.  Photo by Richard M. Brooks

It took Serge the Artist — the self-appointed “hood president” of Little Haiti, and indisputably the most prolific sign painter and muralist in the area — three minutes to destroy one of his greatest creations.

Three excruciating minutes, he recalls, literally praying for a reprieve from Gov. Charlie Crist — for it was an order from the Florida Department of Transportation that put his image of Barack Obama in the death chamber.

The painting was his most inspired work of art among the hundreds that grace myriad botanicas and beauty shops, food markets and Rastafarian boutiques throughout Little Haiti, Liberty City and Hialeah.

“It was the most hurtful thing in my life,” Serge Toussaint recalls, smiling through the bitter memory of taking a can of white acrylic to his Obama. “I cry. I cry. My wife tells me it’s OK, but it hurts me that they made me paint it off.”

The mural in question is Toussaint’s depiction of the mixed-race Democratic presidential candidate standing shoulder to shoulder with Martin Luther King Jr. He painted it at the southwest corner of the I-95 overpass at Northwest 62nd Street. Next to the historical figures, in bold black lettering, Toussaint painted the words “The Dream Team.”

Today there is only a white shadow where Obama used to gaze out beyond the traffic. And a deliberate white rectangle covers the word “Team.”

But the artist’s original vision stood for nearly two months. It ushered eastbound motorists on Martin Luther King Boulevard into the rest of the block-long public artwork that Toussaint produced through a commission from the Liberty City Trust, a beautification and economic development program mostly funded by the city of Miami.

On huge cylindrical concrete support pillars, Toussaint quotes King’s speeches in black letters that engage drivers from a sky-blue background. At the east end of the overpass, the artist painted a second colorful fresco of King. This time King is looking out from a background of planet Earth and other celestial bodies.

“Hate cannot drive out hate,” it reads, facing Miami Edison Senior High School — a school that was locked down last month when a peaceful student demonstration turned into a violent confrontation with police and administrators, and more than 20 students were arrested. “Only love can.”

But in this case, Toussaint’s love for the project, and the community’s embrace of the painting, did not save the art.

On March 14, Liberty City Trust Director Elaine Black called Toussaint to say that he had three days to remove Obama from the overpass. She explained that FDOT viewed the image as a political endorsement rather than an artistic statement. It violated the FDOT bylaws, she said, so it had to go.

“Obama had to be removed because he is running for political office,” Black said, adding that Toussaint was not commissioned to paint the “Dream Team” mural. “The artist did it on his own.”

Toussaint admits it.

He said he was so taken by the potential of the work that he wanted to bring a new edge to King’s statement.

“Martin Luther King’s dream was to unite black people and white people,” Toussaint explains, sipping lemonade at Chef Creole restaurant. “He died without seeing his dream come true.”

He painted the mural, he said, to tell the world that King’s dream has indeed come true.

“When I think about Obama, I think ‘that’s the dream [King] was talking about that he didn’t see.’” Toussaint says. “They both are the dream — if I put them together that makes the dream team.”

But according to FDOT, Toussaint’s vision was somebody’s political nightmare.

FDOT spokesman Brian Rick provided a string of e-mails sent between FDOT directors and the Liberty City Trust. The messages show that FDOT got a complaint March 10 from an anonymous caller who said, “if the Obama painting was to remain, then he should be allowed to paint a picture of his candidate.”

FDOT officials looked into the matter and recommended that the Obama image and the words associated with it be removed. Rick said the city had the permits to paint the blue sky and the quotes on the support pillars, but the Dream Team mural was not a part of the deal.

“The city removed it at [FDOT’s] request,” Rick said. “We can’t appear to look like we support a candidate.”

So on March 15, filled with dread about the loathsome mission he was about to perform, Toussaint parked his audaciously decorated truck at a nearby McDonald’s parking lot. His truck is a moving artwork, festooned with a banner that reads, “The Hood President” in large green letters, and “Not Rich, But Famous” in red.

He waited until the sun went down, a time he knew few people would be likely see him performing his demoralizing task. After shooting about 30 pictures of the work, Toussaint dipped his brush in the white paint and quickly slashed out the image.

“I started with the shirt first, then the suit came off and the tie,” Toussaint remembers sorrowfully. “I did the neck and when I got to the face I said, ‘I’m so sorry, Obama, I didn’t want to do this.’ My heart was broken.”

But Toussaint did not smother his artistic integrity. In turn, he says, he pulled an “in your face.”

Instead of fully covering the image to blend into the background, Toussaint left a white silhouette to remind the world what lies beneath the white paint.

“I still left the shadow for people to see that it’s still there,” Toussaint says with a grin. “It’s deeper now.”

And some people in the neighborhood agree.

“It’s been more marked now that it disappeared than when it was there,” said Gihan Perera, executive director of the Miami Worker’s Center, a nonprofit community organization based on Seventh Avenue.

Perera knows what public art that depicts historical figures means to the community. He recalled the uproar in Liberty City when the famed Oscar Thomas mural of King was removed from its spot on the corner of Northwest 62nd  Street and Seventh Avenue to be cleaned up.

“That really caused a stir,” Perera said. “Everybody thought it was a conspiracy.”

The removal of Obama from the overpass mural, he said, is getting more discussion now that it’s gone because of the timing of its demise. Toussaint painted over the image just days before Obama delivered his inspired essay about race in America and addressed his relationship with the controversial Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

“Just when he claimed his blackness, he got whited out,” Perera says.

There has been little outrage in the community about the mutilated mural. Other concerns — such as economic viability, crime, police harassment and the recent turmoil at Edison High — have overshadowed the paint job. This reporter had to explain who was on the mural to several pedestrians who walk under the overpass every day and didn’t notice it. One woman thought the image was that of Malcolm X, not Obama.

But the mural did not go completely unnoticed. At Ambrosia, a Rastafarian shop on 62nd Avenue, a coterie of clients often hang out discussing politics and current events. The storefront, painted by Toussaint, depicts images of King, Hailie Selassie, Empress  Menen and Marcus Garvey next to lettering that reads “Caution: Educated Black Men.”

One of the store’s owners, a man who identified himself only as Moe, said that for those who noticed, the loss of Obama’s image beneath the overpass made an impact. 

“[The mural] made a lot of people happy,” Moe said. “It represented a positive image in our community. It was inspirational.”

Now that it’s been erased, Moe said, it deepens feelings of mistrust among many residents in the wake of the Edison police action where students claimed to have been brutalized by officials and shared cell phone pictures of the violence.

“It makes us uneasy,” Moe said.

But as with everything in Liberty City, there is no singular consensus. It may be considered a poor inner city neighborhood with all the problems of crime, unemployment and social inequities, but it is not monolithic.

One group of residents discussed the mural for about 30 minutes and determined that painting Obama next to King was not at all merited.

“The conclusion we reached is that Obama has not earned the right to be on the mural,” one member, who would not identify himself, said. “In other words, Martin Luther King has a place there and Obama doesn’t.”

One lawyer who was a part of the group and grew up in the neighborhood said the whole topic of painting murals on public space was just wrong.

“Murals are ghetto forms without any economic currency,” he said. “Instead of painting murals in the inner city, people should be planting trees or doing something else than painting on undesirable locations.”

Toussaint, who has been called “the Picasso of the painted sign,” said he is determined to keep painting signs and murals in the neighborhood he loves. He is happy to show visitors his first mural at his uncle’s shop, Bortan Fabrics on Northeast 54th Street, or the signature Pepsi cans he paints on minimarkets that playfully say “Serge” where the brand name should be.

His work seems to be everywhere, and his evolution as an artist is marked in the progressively realistic renderings of beauty queens and Haitian celebrities, such as comedian Desi Rab or the goddess Marinette, engulfed in flames.

He is applying for a new grant with the Liberty City Trust to paint Little Haiti Park, a new recreation area on Northeast Second Avenue. He wants to paint a detailed map of Haiti that lists every town in the nation. He also wants to memorialize Emmanuel Sanon, considered the greatest Haitian soccer legend ever. Sanon died in Miami this year relatively unknown.

But Toussaint does not restrict his work to Haitian themes. In Hialeah, he’s done dozens of Celia Cruzes and Jose Martis.

He dreams of one day teaching children art. And he hopes to repaint Obama at the end of the election. Regardless of what happens to his Dream Team mural, Toussaint says, King’s dream remains alive.

“I don’t see [the Obama mural] as a masterpiece, because there’s still more [murals] to come,” Toussaint says. “My canvas is in the street, the dream is a shadow and it’s deeper than the actual picture.”