Anyone who has walked Sweet Auburn knows the painting: a roughly six-story portrait of John Lewis, one hand gesturing mid-speech, the word "HERO" floating over his head. It covers the blank side wall of 171 Auburn, at the southwest corner of Auburn Avenue and Jesse Hill Jr. Drive. A December 2023 oral history from SaportaReport gathered the people who made it happen, and their accounts show a landmark that grew out of a chance meeting and a string of favors rather than a formal plan.
The image shows Lewis addressing the 1963 March on Washington. A longtime City Council member and 17-term congressman, he had also chaired the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and ridden as an original Freedom Rider. A lower panel beside the portrait carries his signature and a passage from that speech urging listeners to get into the streets and stay there until freedom arrives. The wall faces the far end of Auburn, where Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthplace and church still stand. Lewis was a member of that congregation, and his funeral was held there.
The mural is the work of The Loss Prevention, an art collective co-founded by Maggie White and Sean Schwab. Its "hero" series also honors Evelyn Lowery, Dázon Dixon Diallo and Joan Garner, but the Lewis piece is far larger than the rest. White recalled that she and Schwab first met the congressman when he stepped out of Binder's Art Supplies and Frames in Buckhead while Schwab and the artist Dr. Dax were painting a mural nearby. Soon after, White mentioned the idea to a vendor at her gallery, Bess Weyandt, whose brother Matt was managing Lewis's 2012 re-election campaign.
White is firm on one point: the concept came from Lewis's constituents, not his campaign staff. Matt Weyandt describes the effort the same way, as an organic, community-driven project that fit what the congressman stood for. At the time, he notes, Freedom Parkway did not yet carry Lewis's name, and few places in Atlanta were named for him.
Developer and broker Gene Kansas, who had leased campaign space on the block to Lewis and, before him, to President Obama's local re-election office, suggested putting the mural on the same building that housed the Lewis headquarters. Its owners at the time, an Israeli group based in California, needed persuading before they would give up a wall that could have carried advertising. Kansas says he made the case that the return would be measured in Civil Rights history.
Schwab agreed to paint for free, but supplies and a lift still had to be paid for. The collective's $10,000 fee and paint costs were covered through fundraising led by Sonya Halpern, now a state senator, who drew on Jackmont Hospitality and businessman Mack Wilbourn. Then-Councilmember Kwanza Hall helped with permits. Halpern says the commitments came together in under a week.
Painted over the summer of 2012, the mural was unveiled on Aug. 24 that year, with Lewis joining Schwab to dot the "i" in his own name as the final brushstroke.
The original landlord agreement allowed the wall to be painted over, and the Butler Street Community Development Corporation had long eyed the ground in front of it for affordable housing and commercial redevelopment. That changed after Lewis died in July 2020, when crowds gathered at the mural to reflect, and a rededication followed in 2021. Board chair Alfonza Marshall says the CDC concluded it could not build anything else there. The group is now working with SCAD, Sweet Auburn Works and others on a long-term plan for a park at the mural's base, meant as a place to reflect, which would follow other neighborhood projects such as Sweet Auburn Grande across the street.
Salim Jetha, a partner in the retail ownership group that took over in 2019, has expressed interest in funding a refresh of about $20,000 along with ongoing upkeep, an idea still under discussion with the building's residential owners, its commercial tenants and Sweet Auburn Works. Sweet Auburn Works executive director LeJuano Varnell sees a wall that could have turned its back on the community now working as a draw, and the neighborhood's most Instagrammable moment.
Original reporting by John Ruch for SaportaReport.
