Nazerah Tesfazghi, 9, painstakingly dabbed light blue paint onto the mural taking shape on the soundwall just outside Richmond’s Parchester Village last weekend.
The Richmond resident was one of a group of volunteers working on the approximately quarter-mile-long, 7-foot-tall mural along Giant Road celebrating the neighborhood, described by many as the only place where African Americans could purchase homes in Richmond in the 1940s, if not for years after that.
“I love to paint with my mom,” said Nazerah, who was there with her mother, Raeven Tesfazghi. “We paint and color together. I want to be an artist.”
Her mother added, “My father grew up in Parchester Village.”
The neighborhood has an inclusive legacy dating back to shortly after World War II, and the mother-daughter duo was adding to that legacy by working on the mural, which memorializes the unique village.
And they aren’t the only ones. Nearly 500 people have worked on the 88-panel mural in a series of neighborhood paint days held over a period of years, organizers said. Sunday’s work was supervised by artist Richard Muro Salazar and assistant John Wehrle.
“This is one of Richmond’s largest murals,” said Stephanie Ny, program manager for the city’s Love Your Block program. The program is part of the city’s Community Services Department and works with volunteer residents to beautify Richmond.
The Parchester Village Neighborhood Council came up with the idea for the project in 2016, and the Richmond Arts and Culture Commission, Meritage Homes, and Richmond Love Your Block have contributed to the project, Ny said.
Dipping her paintbrush in blue paint almost the same shade as her blouse, volunteer Barbara Tanaka of the East Richmond neighborhood said, “I’m promoting community in Richmond. We’re all from the same city.”
Along with trees, blue skies and mountains, bold gold colors pop in the mural with letters on a blue background spelling PARCHESTER VILLAGE, while the faces of prominent people from the neighborhood’s history gaze out at people passing by on Giant Road.
“Fred Parr is in the mural. He was the developer of Parchester Village. It’s named after him,” said Lori Hart, vice-president of the Parchester Village Neighborhood Council. Hart was staffing the volunteer sign-in table at the Saturday event.
During World War II, many African Americans left the South and moved to Richmond for jobs in the shipyards. When the war ended, the wartime housing projects where they lived were torn down.
African Americans experienced discrimination in Richmond when they tried to purchase housing, Hart said.
Parr “was one of the few that tried early on to have equal housing for everybody,” Parr’s nephew, John Parr Cox, said in an interview recorded in the Online Archive of California.
Hart said, “Parr got together with the preachers. He went to the churches” to let African Americans know they were welcome to buy homes in Parchester Village, according to Hart, who grew up in Parchester Village.
In addition to memorializing Parr, the mural contains Native American symbols, Hart said.
“The Ohlone had the land before anybody else,” Hart said. The symbols pay homage to the Native American community, she said.
“Community” seemed to be the watchword of the day on Saturday.
“When a community comes together to beautify public spaces with art, it sends a powerful signal that collectively there are no limits to what we can accomplish,” said Contra Costa County Supervisor John Gioia.
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