‘Positive revolution.’ Miami artist paints mural in Overtown of Floyd, Taylor, Kaepernick

Kyle Holbrook knows it could have been him.

He could have died from police brutality or gun violence. The 42-year-old still has scars on his back from when he was beaten by police 20 years ago.

He said three of his best friends suffered the same fate as George Floyd, who died at age 46 in custody of Minneapolis police, and Breonna Taylor, who was shot at least eight times in her sleep by Louisville police at age 27.

After peacefully protesting in Miami last Saturday, Holbrook, who lives in North Bay Village, wanted to relay messages of justice to more people. So he decided to memorialize Floyd and Taylor, along with former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick, on a mural in Overtown, the historically black Miami neighborhood.

“It felt good. It felt like having a unified voice,” he said. “I felt a real good energy standing in solidarity.”

He said protests turning violent made sense to him — centuries of racism are finally boiling over — but he said the violence he saw on Saturday was mostly instigated by white people.

Black communities should be controlling the narrative, he said. So he turned to art, as he always does, to create a mural as a symbol for healing. Since it was painted last Sunday, people have added powerful phrases like “I can’t breathe,” and “Black Lives Matter.”

“Everybody loved it, everybody said thank you,” he said. “There were a lot of tears.”

As a black teenager, he was kicked out of his high school after punching another student who called him the n-word. Holbrook said that finding art as a form of expression changed his life. Saturday art classes always made him feel like he had a purpose.

He has been a full-time artist for 22 years. In 2002, Holbrook created Moving Lives of Kids (MLK) Murals, a nonprofit that has paid nearly 7,000 aspiring artists from underprivileged circumstances to work on murals in 43 countries and 27 states.

“There’s always going to be some systemic racism, no matter what,” Holbrook said. “It’s part of America, it’s part of life. I think these protests can help make change, but the larger changes come from actually changing policy. The power of public art has been a tool utilized for positive revolution.”

Fred Moline, 27, is a registered nurse and artist. He said he learned his own self-worth as a black man in America from Holbrook, who he has known for two years.

“We really matter, too,” said Moline, who lives in North Miami Beach. “The murals give voices to the young community and to the people, to enlighten them about the stuff that’s going on, to get them to do better.”

The symbolism of Kaepernick versus Floyd is important to Moline. One black man kneeled down for justice, and another died from a white man kneeling down. He said he hopes when people walk around Overtown and see the mural they created, that they remember the movement and what it stands for.

“It shouldn’t take this for people to see what’s going on,” he said. “People should take accountability of what’s going on in the world.”

When Holbrook works on murals, the people in those cities are always involved. Kyla Holbrook, his daughter, said she does the same in her outreach work as a biomedical engineering student at Columbia University,

The 20-year-old said uplifting communities comes from tackling what is important to them. What her father has done through art in terms of activism, she hopes to do through medicine.

“I’ve always been really proud of my dad because he’s always been very willing to address these issues,” she said.

Kyra Holbrook said the mural memorializes the values of community, peace and God that Floyd and Taylor would have wanted them to.

“These protests are really important,” she said. “They’ll be remembered for years to come. And art is a powerful way to cement some of these messages and portray the issues.”

This story was originally published June 5, 2020 at 1:11 PM.