Main Street Magazine Spring '23

Dr. Pecou and his mission
When Dr. Fahamu Pecou of Atlanta visited UNH Durham in 2018, Black people
being targeted in police shootings were in the news again. Speaking to students
at his exposition at Paul Creative Arts Center on the Durham campus, Dr. Pecou
explained how he encouraged young people to vent their frustration through art
and music.
Dr. Pecou spoke about the epiphany he had as a young adult:
“I went to a local movie theater with friends, we went to see Menace II Society”
(1993, New Line Cinema),” Dr. Pecou said. “Going out on the street after seeing
that film, I was thinking, ‘Something really bad could happen to me at any time,
because I’m Black’.”
Artwork on display included spiritual references to African American ancestry,
providing themes of the strength of mothers, and how persecuted souls,
dismembered by hate and prejudice, are rebuilt through resiliency and faith.
Signs and portents
In 1994/95, while between Army enlistments, I received training in Burlington,
Vermont with the police department as an auxiliary officer. One of the
experienced patrol officers explained to me how ​the department was concerned
that graffiti turning up in that city was heralding the arrival of threatening gangs,
and the outlaw motorcycle club Hell’s Angels.
kilroy was here
Reenlisting in the Army after the tragic events of 9/11, I ended up deploying
three times to Iraq. The communal latrines (military bathrooms) and port-a-johns
that we encountered in theater featured some of the most graphic graffiti I have
ever seen from deployed service members. Amidst the jungle of erotic images
and profanity, I found ​the old traditional Army image of “Kilroy was here,” alleged
to have been initiated in WWII or before. I found solace in the Kilroy images. It
was not offensive like other graffiti, and seemed to speak to a brotherhood of
soldiers that spread across different wars and generations. I suspect that Kilroy
lives on because others feel the same way.
“Kilroy was here” is a meme that became popular during the Second World
War, typically seen in graffiti. Its origin is not one hundred percent verifiable.
That being said, the phrase and the distinctive accompanying doodle became
associated with GIs in the Second World War. It is the image of a bald or nearly
bald man with a large nose, peeking over a wall with his fingers clutching the
wall.
“Mr Chad” or just “Chad” was the version that became popular with the British
military. The character of Chad possibly came from a British cartoonist in 1938.
Other names for the character include Smoe, Clem, Flywheel, Private Snoops,
Overby, Eugene the Jeep, Scabooch, and Sapo.
According to Charles Panati, former author and science editor for Newsweek,
“The outrageousness of the graffiti was not so much what it said, but where it
turned up.” Panati mentioned that it is not known if there was an actual person
named Kilroy who inspired the graffiti, although there have been numerous
claims over the years.
expressions of rage and hope
The killing of George Floyd in 2020 facilitated a massive amount of deep-feeling
graffiti that embodied the crying out of persecuted individuals.
In the two years following the murder of Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis,
Minnesota, about 2,700 pieces of graffiti art around the world were created
in response to his death (George Floyd and Anti-Racist Street Art Database).
Walls and buildings and entire streets display his image, and the words “I can’t
breathe” and “Black Lives Matter.”
evolution of my views
My view of graffiti has evolved with my life experiences and my college
education. While some of it is foul, it is difficult not to respect the constructive
use of it as a vehicle of needed societal change. It pays to examine and try to
understand graffiti. Now, as I walk through Dover, or during my next planned
visits to Boston and NYC, I will guard against my old reflex of revulsion and
study surfaces closely, alert for messages of hope and light in the graffiti that I
encounter.
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