Abolitionist Park Mural

Digi Chivetta

(October 15, 2022)
42-50 Snow St, Fitchburg, MA 01420

“Although I didn’t shy away from the gravity of the subject, you will notice that there are no depictions of chains or enslaved people,” the talented 34-year-old Northborough artist said. “These images only serve to re-traumatize viewers who have already been through too much. Instead, I filled the composition with twirling Egùngùn masquerade dancers adorned with vibrant costumes.” She said Egùngùn masquerades “honor a category of collective ancestors” and the practice originates from Yorubaland, Nigeria. “As a Yoruba Orisa devotee, these are the images that I want Black children to have of their ancestors, not the cruelty that was inflicted upon them,” Chivetta said. “The Egùngùn dancers also represent the rich cultures that we, as Black people, were severed from as a result of the slave trade.” The…mural…features…prominent city abolitionists Benjamin Snow Jr., who the street is named after, his wife Martha Snow Wallace, Theodore Becker, a medic on the side of the abolitionists, the Grimké sisters Sarah Moore and Angelina Emily, and Frederick Douglass, who visited Fitchburg several times and was a major supporter of the movement there. The white abolitionists surround the composition that also includes abolitionist related quotes. “Their stance and clasped hands are a reference to the ‘white shields’ at Black Lives Matter protests,” Chivetta said of the white abolitionists. “I did this to emphasize the importance of white allies in the process of healing the country from the atrocities of slavery.” (Sentinel & Enterprise)

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