Knights Of Peter Claver Dedicate Social Justice Mural

Story By Clarion Staff
Photo | COURTESY KNIGHTS OF PETER CLAVER

The Knights of Peter Claver, Inc., headquartered in New Orleans, recently unveiled and dedicated a social justice mural entitled, “Open Wide Our Hearts: The Enduring Call to Love” at the Catholic Newman Center at Texas Southern University in Houston.

The mural was designed and painted by local artist Victor Gaddie, with the help of more than 120 Catholic teens last July during the Junior National Convention of the Knights of Peter Claver in Houston. High school juniors and seniors from New Orleans participated in painting the mural, said Knights of Peter Claver executive director Grant Jones.

Symbols of a road, heart, open hands, a young girl and dove uphold a message of the Knights of Peter Claver’s journey toward love, openness, innocence and peace. It is a visible message of love that speaks out against injustices in our community, nation and world, and serves as a call to action.

It also is a reminder of the dignity of life for all persons and our responsibility as a community, city, nation and world to exude love in spaces  with hate and wrongdoing.

“It was a wonderful experience,” said Carrington Guillory, 18, now a biology pre-med freshman at Xavier University of Louisiana and a member of Xavier’s Knights of Peter Claver Crescent City Council No. 403. “Most of us only have the chance to observe paintings done by artists we may never see. The opportunity to work alongside many of my peers to generate a piece of art that symbolizes the work that the Knights of Peter Claver strives to achieve was a life-changing event.”

Jones said the mural project is an example of the Knights’ social justice outreach, a concern among youth that grew out of the Black Lives Matters movement.

“That’s how this (mural) project was born,” Jones said. “Our focus is to invigorate our youth by keeping them engaged in our church and exciting them about our organization.”

The Catholic Newman Center at Texas Southern University was selected as the mural’s location due its parallel mission with the Knights of Peter Claver, Inc., to keep youth involved in the Catholic faith. Since its inception, Texas Southern University has fought for social justice by providing education to black and brown students.

Knights’ history

The Knights of Peter Claver, Inc., is the nation’s only African-American Catholic fraternal order and the largest historically Black Catholic organization in the world. It was founded Nov. 7, 1909, in Mobile, Alabama, for Catholic men of color, and seeks to provide a moral and spiritual compass to eradicate issues of racism, domestic violence and human trafficking and advocates for criminal justice reform through awareness programs and education. 

For more about Knights, visit www.kofpc.org. Christine Bordelon contributed to this story.