Black Press President Visits Miami For Mural Dedication

Miami FL

04 March, 2021

8:09 AM

Description

Miami Times Staff Report, Courtesy of Broadway Harewood Mar 3, 2021 The final installment of Broadway Harewood's series of commissioned murals to honor Black History Month was unveiled Saturday in the Liberty City Broadway Art District at 6209 NW 18th Ave. It took two weeks to complete by "Nice," an artist who has painted murals in the area for nearly a decade. The work pays tribute to Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis Jr., National Newspaper Publishers Association president and CEO, who flew in to Miami for the unveiling attended by local dignitaries. "To have Dr. Chavis come here to Liberty City and to honor him like this is a dream," stated Harewood, a majority owner of commercial real estate in Liberty City who has used the arts to reduce crime in the area. "Dr. Chavis was one of the 'Wilmington Ten' and author of 'Psalms from Prison.'" The Wilmington Ten, the Chavis-led civil rights activist group that served nearly a decade in prison in the 1970s on trumped-up and racially motivated charges of arson and conspiracy, were eventually released from prison and exonerated. In 2012, North Carolina Gov. Beverly Perdue pardoned the civil rights leaders, correcting a nearly five decades-old false conviction. Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis Jr. in front of the mural dedicated to him in Liberty City, painted by the artist known as "Nice." Courtesy of Broadway Harewood A native of Oxford, North Carolina, Chavis received a Bachelor of Arts in chemistry from the University of North Carolina; a Master of Divinity from Duke University; and a Doctor of Ministry from Howard University. He is an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ and the author of "Psalms from Prison." Chavis began his career in 1963 as a statewide youth coordinator in North Carolina for the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). The Miami Times is the largest Black-owned newspaper in the south serving Miami's Black community since 1923. The award-winning weekly is frequently recognized as the best Black newspaper in the country by the National Newspaper Publishers Association.