Work has begun on revisions to the mural commemorating the 1906 Atlanta Race Massacre in South Atlanta, following months of intense community debate over its imagery and the process by which it was created.
The 1906 Atlanta Race Massacre was a four-day wave of racial terror when white mobs attacked Black communities throughout Atlanta, leaving at least 25 Black men, women, and children dead, hundreds injured or missing, and businesses destroyed.
The original mural, commissioned by the National Center for Civil and Human Rights and painted by local artist Fabian Williams, was intended to bring awareness to the event. The mural, which is on a building owned by Focused Community Strategies, depicts Black residents rebuilding a home and a Black and white person shaking hands, but it also prominently features a scene of a white man choking a Black man — an image based on a 1906 French newspaper illustration.
Shortly after the mural was unveiled in the fall of 2025, residents voiced concerns about the violent imagery and limited community involvement throughout the design process.
Now, after community meetings and a Facebook group poll that allowed residents to vote on possible changes to the mural, a revision is currently underway. New imagery is being added to the wall to cover the scene of the Black man being choked.
While the revisions are incomplete, the images will depict the front page of the Atlanta Journal newspaper from the time of the massacre and images of the gubernatorial candidates that year, Hoke Smith and Clark Howell, all of which played a part in causing the massacre.
But as the community worked to find a path forward, not everyone is content with the outcome.
Brenda Trammell, a longtime resident of South Atlanta, told Capital B Atlanta that she didn’t agree with the revisions that were proposed in the Facebook group and wished more positive imagery of the community, like some of the historical Black institutions located throughout the neighborhood, could have been added to the mural.
“The revisions, from what they’re putting up now, I’m not happy with them,” Trammell said. “I just wish at least one of the pieces up there could be of Clark College, but that’s just me. I’ll just have to wait and see.”
At a tense community meeting in October, Trammell said she was worried that the original artwork could invoke strong feelings of violence among the students at Carver High. The school is located across the street from the mural and is where her grandson attends.
Marvin Nesbitt, FCS’ president, admitted at the October meeting that the organization had “dropped the ball” on fostering community engagement around the mural, and he publicly apologized.
NaKeesha Hayes, who has lived in South Atlanta for about one year, said that as a newer resident of the neighborhood, she felt the original mural was “impactful.”
“I look at it from a historical space of understanding what significance this community has because in spite of what happened so many years ago, we can still find camaraderie amongst everyone, and we can grow from that,” Hayes said.
While she said she thinks the revisions are beautiful and that she’s a fan of the design, she said she would have been OK with the original mural.
“I can see why it would be so triggering to specific people, but my personal opinion is it should have stayed the same only because people like me who are coming into this space, we need to know the history of what we’re walking into,” Hayes said.
Joshua Barber, the president of the South Atlanta Civic League and a longtime resident of the neighborhood, said that while some residents resonated with the need to confront history, he understands why others found the visuals difficult to encounter daily.
“It was definitely a piece that you had to sit back and take in. I was kind of in the middle — I could see both sides,” he said.
Barber said the South Atlanta Civic League felt it was in a position to help create a space where “everybody can be heard.” It organized the October community meeting and the Facebook poll, where three new options were presented for residents to vote on.
“Both in the meeting and in the poll, there was a strong lean toward revision — toward the mural needing to be adjusted in some fashion,” he said. He described the most popular choice as a blend of some of Williams’ earlier designs that softens some of the violent imagery while still preserving the historical narrative.
Barber said the revisions on the mural began earlier this year, but he was unable to provide a completion date. Williams and representatives from FCS and NCCHR could not be immediately reached for comment.
He said the South Atlanta Civic League continues to update residents at its general body meetings.
Barber said the broader lesson from this process is that the community’s voice should always remain at the center.
“Let this be an example to remember to speak within and engage the community in this way, because that’s the best way to go about these types of projects,” he said. “I hope that it helps with a future project, wherever it may be, and how people handle the process of community engagement.”
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