Gray paint rolled over 'Black Artists Matter' this week, and it went down fast. Crews covered the mural on Austin's East 11th Street on Thursday, one of at least 16 pieces of roadway art the state ordered stripped from the city, according to CBS Austin. A giant burnt-orange 'TEXAS' crosswalk mural on Guadalupe Street, near the UT Austin campus, came out the same week.
A mural that marked a moment
Local Black artists painted 'Black Artists Matter' in tall yellow letters down East 11th Street in June 2020, a day ahead of Juneteenth, a joint project between the Austin Justice Coalition and Capitol View Arts, according to KXAN. The block sits inside Six Square, the only African-American cultural district in the state of Texas, per African Elements. The mural stood for five years as a neighborhood landmark and a protest symbol before this week's paint crew showed up.
The order came from the top
Gov. Greg Abbott directed the Texas Department of Transportation in October 2025 to enforce the Texas Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices against roadway markings that don't direct traffic, arguing state money shouldn't fund "political agendas" on public roads, per KUT. Austin asked to keep the mural and the rainbow crosswalks anyway. TxDOT said no in May, ruling the markings still failed federal guidance, according to KUT.
The list runs longer than the two names anyone outside Austin has heard. City records named 16 markings under review, from stenciled crosswalks two kids painted in a Southeast Austin neighborhood in 2017 to a flood memorial at Onion Creek Metropolitan Park that officials ultimately ruled compliant, per that same KUT review. Black Artists Matter and the Fourth Street rainbow crosswalk are just the two with a national profile.
The crosswalks are going too
The rainbow Pride crosswalk at Fourth and Colorado streets went down in 2021 to honor a strip of longtime LGBTQ-friendly businesses, and it fell under the same order, with the city facing an end-of-July deadline to strip the roadway art or risk losing state funding, reported Axios Austin. The 'TEXAS' lettering on Guadalupe went in during summer 2024, timed to the Longhorns' debut in the SEC. It came out on July 2, in step with the same directive, according to The Daily Texan.
Residents aren't taking it quietly. "It makes me feel really sad and angry," Austinite Landry Knowles told CBS Austin. Jean-Pierre Verdijo, who helped paint the original mural in 2020, called the removal predictable, tying it to what he described as a broader drift toward authoritarianism mixed with racism and homophobia. Todd Hogan of the Austin LGBT Chamber of Commerce said the crosswalk had been "a visible reminder that LGBTQ+ people belong in Austin," but added that the community's future isn't defined by a stretch of paint.
Painting up instead of down
Austin can't fight the state on the pavement, so it moved the fight to the walls. Community members painted a new mural near the Fourth and Colorado crosswalks in June, and organizers plan an LGBTQ historical marker for the same corner later this summer, per African Elements. The logic is simple. The state controls the road. It doesn't control the wall next to it.
The gray paint on East 11th Street will fade fast under Texas sun and Texas traffic. What replaces the mural is still being decided, one vertical wall at a time.
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