Texas Southern University

128 student murals adorn the walls of historic Mack H. Hannah Hall, the second oldest building on Texas Southern’s campus. The mural program was the brainchild of Dr. John T. Biggers, who lobbied early TSU presidents to allow his senior art majors to paint the walls of what was then the only academic building on campus. While Dr. Biggers demanded quality, he never censored students’ expression and the murals cover a range of topics including politics, religion, nature, futurism, and rural life in the South. The Hannah Hall murals serve as a visual diary, providing a lens into the worldviews of young, Black artists from the 1950s to 2010s.

This project is the beginning of an effort to digitize the Hannah Hall murals. On this site, you will find 21 digitized murals, accompanied by short supplementary essays and additional information about each mural. 

This program is made possible in part by a grant from Humanities Texas, the state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.