Texas Southern University

          Charles Hatter's mural includes a full church choir with a variety of men, women, and children dressed in robes. The singers are pictured mid-song, with their mouths agape and hands clasped. The artist deliberately chose the location of his mural in order to depict the choir standing upon risers, arching over the doorway to the stairs. Dr. Biggers’ instructed students to “relate the painting to the wall and not cut a hole in the wall with the painting,” and Hatter certainly heeded that direction. The square, white patch in the middle of the mural replaced an exit sign that was originally embedded in the wall; an archival photo taken by Dr. Biggers shows the original configuration of the exit sign in the mural. Light radiates out from where the exit sign once was, with a lamppost beneath it.

          Charles Hatter was born in 1934 and grew up on a farm in the outskirts of Houston, with his mother, father, and three siblings. He later served as a Private First Class in the US Army. Hatter likely attended Texas Southern with funding from the GI Bill, which supported (among other things) college tuition for veterans. In this mural, the artist renders memories for those who have experienced the Black Southern church. Perhaps his life was also filled with these memories from church life. Many Black church hymns, and gospel music as a whole, derive from enslaved peoples. While enslaved, music was a way to pass time and lift spirits during such harsh living conditions. Many of the same songs and hymns have been carried down from one generation to the next or easily recognized by the same chords.

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