On April 10th, Olympic gold medalist Jesse Owens was honored on a 15′ by 15′ mural, created by Duke Ellington students under the guidance of artist Mark Walker and presented by newly-elected Mayor Muriel Bowser.
It was presented on behalf of the students of The Duke Ellington School of the Arts, a DC public school. Winner of four gold medals in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, Owens was the son of a sharecropper and the grandson of a slave. At the height of his fame, he lived in the Michigan Boulevard Garden Apartments, also know as the Rosenwald. He would go for his daily run and slow up so the children who ran with him could keep up.
The mural project was done in partnership with Duke Ellington, the DC Office of Motion Picture and Television Development, and the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities.
