Janet Braun-Reinitz is a New York muralist, painter, and activist. She was the Rochester CORE chair and also worked at national CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) office from 1961 to 1962. As a  participant in the Saint Louis, Missouri to New Orleans, Louisiana Freedom

Ride, she was arrested and jailed in Little Rock, Arkansas. Much of her work reflects on those experiences and on her involvement with the feminist movement - stories waiting to be re-told, commentaries on recent events and those fading from history that resonates in many registers- from Emmett till to Travon Martin.

 

Since 1984 she has painted between fifty and sixty murals in seven countries: England, Georgia, Ghana, India. Italy, Nicaragua, and the United States. Many of the murals were painted under the sponsorship of Artmakers Inc, an artist-run, politically oriented community organization that collaborates with local residents to create public art that is relevant to their lives and concerns.  Braun-Reinitz led Artmakers from 1992 to 2013.

 

The four-story-high "When Women Pursue Justice" in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn is dedicated to the memory of Shirley Chisholm and celebrates 90 women who have led or participated in movements for social change in the United States.

 

Together with Jane Weissman, she co-authored: On The Wall: Four Decades of Community Murals In New York City,(The University Press of Mississippi)i. A six-year endeavor, the text includes one hundred and fifty color photos of one hundred and forty murals created since 1968. The authors call it “a window into the unwritten history of neighborhoods."

 

To learn more about the Freedom Riders, go to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_Riders