As heavy rain ripped through a gray Quad Cities Wednesday morning, bursts of color brightened a brief block of downtown Davenport.
A new mural by nationally recognized artist and muralist Cbabi Bayoc is done, next to the Martin Luther King Jr. Interpretive Center, 501 N. Brady St. Work on the mural began Wednesday, June 10 along the north-facing train bridge wall adjacent to MLK Park, and Bayoc finished Monday night, June 15, returning to his St. Louis home Tuesday morning.
“He banged it out,” Ben Gougeon, community engagement director for Quad City Arts, said Wednesday, June 17. “It’s awesome, it’s incredible. Honestly, it’s one of my favorite murals in town. There’s so much history that is woven in.”
Bayoc and Friends of MLK executive director Ryan Saddler had long conversations about the figures and events that should be reflected in the mural, and each of the three finalists got similar information about what should be depicted in the piece, Gougeon said, noting Bayoc produced the most detailed design. Friends of MLK will put together a guide to what’s in the mural, which will be either inside the center and/or online.
Saddler approached Quad City Arts and Downtown Davenport Partnership about 18 months ago about the idea, and QC Arts successfully sought an Iowa Arts Council grant of about $15,000 for the mural. The nonprofit also led the request for qualifications and the artist selection process.
Gougeon said the mural is unique in the area in tying together so much local history.
“One thing Ryan is very excited about is doing tours of the Black history of Davenport, and to use this mural with so many historical references as a teaching and educational tool,” he said. “It’s going to be a really great conversation piece.”
It’s also the first in a multi-phase public art project at MLK Park, Gougeon said. A mural by Rock Island’s Zay Williams will be painted this summer behind the stage and another is planned for a retaining wall up the hill, he said.
The project is a partnership among Friends of MLK, Quad City Arts and the Downtown Davenport Partnership, intended to honor the resilience, entrepreneurship, entertainment, labor and community life of Black Davenport during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The $45,000 project is supported in part by an Arts Project Grant (of nearly $15,000) through the Iowa Arts Council and Iowa Economic Development Authority.
Bayoc, a St. Louis-based artist whose work can be found in schools, universities, hospitals and public spaces across the country, was selected following a multi-phase review process. More than 40 artists submitted qualifications for consideration.
A review committee representing Friends of MLK, Quad City Arts, and the Downtown Davenport Partnership picked three finalists, who received stipends to develop site-specific concepts informed by historical research and conversations with community leaders. Final concepts were then reviewed by the selection committee and additional project advisors.
The selection committee considered artist qualifications, historical alignment, artistic merit, feasibility and community feedback before making its final recommendation, with a particular emphasis on the project’s educational and storytelling goals.
“When we began this project, we weren’t looking for a mural that simply celebrated history. We were looking for a mural that could help people discover it. This site was once home to Black-owned businesses, restaurants, entertainment venues and gathering spaces that played an important role in the story of Black Davenport,” said Ryan Saddler, executive director of the Friends of MLK.
“What stood out about Cbabi’s design was his ability to weave so many of those stories together into a single piece of artwork. The mural invites people to slow down, ask questions and engage with a chapter of Davenport’s history that is not widely known today.”
The selected mural combines historical imagery and references drawn from the area’s past into a layered visual narrative that encourages exploration and reflection. Committee members noted that the concept stood out for its ability to weave together multiple stories while creating opportunities for future educational programming connected to the site.
Painting the best picture of local history
“His mural really painted the best picture of those that were submitted of being able to tell a comprehensive story,” Saddler said Thursday, June 11. Of the local figures in the mural are Father Marvin Mottet (at right with Martin Luther King. Jr.), who awarded Dr. King the “Pacem in Terris” Peace and Freedom Award at Davenport Masonic Temple in 1965, as well as famed Davenport native Bix Beiderbecke and his friend, trumpeter Louis Armstrong.
Mottet (1930-2016) helped to form the Catholic Interracial Council (CIC) in 1957, and brought his students into contact with the racial problems that existed in Davenport. In 1963, he attended Dr. King’s March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, and the CIC created the Pacem in Terris Peace and Freedom Award.
The last right panel of the new mural includes King's quote from the 1965 award ceremony: "You can tell we're making some progress when a Catholic Interracial Council gives an award to a Baptist minister named Martin Luther King, Jr., and it takes place in the Masonic Temple."
In the mural design, specific to MLK Park is a depiction of Linsey Pitts, who escaped slavery in Missouri, enlisted in the Union Army in the 60th US Colored Troops Infantry, serving from 1863 to 1865. After the Civil War, she settled in Davenport, where she became well known in the community, becoming the first Black business owner in Davenport, with a saloon located at the site of what is now MLK Park.
The mural also shows Eudora Nuckels, the first African-American graduate of Davenport High School in 1873, and Alexander Clark of Muscatine, a 19th-century civil rights leader. Clark was denied entry to the University of Iowa’s law school, and fought to get his son, Alexander Jr., admitted. In 1879, Alexander Jr. became the first Black man to graduate from the U of I law school, and Clark himself became the second in 1884.
The three mural finalists submitted a specific design, incorporating some of this local history that Saddler requested. He said Bayoc stood out among the three.
“I threw a plethora of stories, of information at each of these three artists, and he captured so much of it,” he said. “Our intent to be able to have this space for people to learn independently, but also with some brief narrative to kind of understand the images, the stories behind the images. So it gives us an opportunity to tell some of those stories.”
The mural also references local civil-rights leader Charles Toney, who successfully sued after being denied service in 1945 at the Colonial Fountain, a small ice cream shop on 12th and Harrison Streets, Davenport.
Positioned just outside the MLK Interpretive Center, the mural will serve as a powerful visual extension of the Center’s mission, bringing stories of Black Davenport into the public realm and creating new opportunities for reflection, conversation and learning, according to a Thursday release.
One of the artist’s favorites
Seven square blocks of the wall, totaling over 100 feet wide and 15 feet tall, was not the largest mural he’s ever done. Bayoc said Wednesday that five days is a typical timeframe for his murals.
Bayoc, 53, has spent more than three decades developing his artistic practice (focusing on murals just since 2017), and is known for creating work that explores history, identity, family and community. His public art projects can be found throughout the U.S. and he is also a New York Times bestselling illustrator.
This was his first time in the QC and he enjoyed it, with his wife, Amber.
“We like the area. We had the Mississippi River in common,” Bayoc said. “Outside of even the history of it, but just the interesting connections between that and St. Louis. So there was a familiarity that we noticed.”
He previously did a Civil War-themed mural in Fort Scott, Kansas, and an interior school mural in Waterloo, Iowa, the hometown of “1619 Project” author Nikole Hannah-Jones. That’s at the 1619 Freedom School (established in 2021), named for the year the first enslaved Africans were sold into the English colonies that would form the United States and from the free community schools launched by SNCC during the Civil Rights Movement to educate Black youth on their history.
“It was mostly about education, in the history of this country,” Bayoc said of that school mural. “I had to be pretty good. That was also a five-day project.”
Of Davenport, “I definitely say it's one of my favorite murals. And there was so much more we could have put in it, but you know, I think we got it,” he said. “Ryan just wanted enough tidbits to give them information to feed into stories. So he just wanted a bunch of Easter eggs all over the mural. There definitely could be more panels done to cover, because he said he had a fixed space. But he gave me what he gave me and I made it happen.”
“I think it's really cool to let people know just where they are,” Bayoc said of depicting local history, “I've had people drive down the 5th Street corridor all the time not knowing that was where the Underground Railroad was, John Brown had been there. I think all that stuff is significant.”
In May 2025, Bayoc’s dedication to Black history also was showcased in work he did for the renovation at St. Louis’s Old Courthouse, the site of the landmark Dred Scott case.
The Old Courthouse reopened with the Journey to Justice festival, whose theme and visual identity were crafted by Bayoc, and his art was featured in a new video for the Dred and Harriet Scott exhibit inside the courthouse.
“I had done a rebranding of the old courthouse here in St. Louis, so I got to get familiar with the Scott stories, but knowing that he was actually there (in the QC area) for a couple years and that sparked his desire to even go to the courts for his freedom. Again, another crazy connection,” Bayoc said Wednesday.
Dr. John Emerson, an Army physician, moved in 1833 to the federal military outpost Fort Armstrong (today’s Arsenal Island), with his slave, Dred Scott, whom he had purchased in St. Louis. Emerson served as an assistant medical officer at Fort Armstrong between 1833 and 1836.
In 1846, Scott sued for his freedom in St. Louis, claiming that he was already a free man because he had lived in the free state of Illinois and in the Wisconsin Territory, where the Northwest Ordinance prohibited slavery. The trial took place in 1847, and Scott lost.
In 1857, the nation's top court ruled that living in a free state and territory did not entitle Dred Scott to his freedom because, as an enslaved man, he was not a citizen, but essentially another person's property.
Beautifying communities
Bayoc said public art helps to beautify and bind communities, instilling pride of place.
“I love it. I mean, it's part of the reason me and my wife travel,” he said. “We go looking for public art, and I always go to cities and try to see things. I mean, concrete by itself is kind of boring, so I don't think there's any harm in adding some color as a joy to people's travels or to their scene as they move through the day.”
Bayoc, whose birth name is Clifford Miskell, Jr., adopted his name CBABI (Creative-Black-Artist-Battling- Ignorance) during his time at Grambling State University (‘92-‘95), where he majored in art. In 1997, a legal name change took place at the time of his marriage. Later, Cbabi would change his last name to BAYOC (Blessed-African-Youth-Of-Creativity) as something that could be shared with his future children.
“At Grambling, I took a Swahili class and I decided to give myself a name that would remind me of what I was doing,” he said. “Before I got to Grambling, I nicknamed myself C-Baby because I was born Clifford. And when I got to Grambling, I didn't want that name anymore, so I like the CBAB because I— when I read it, when I was learning Swahili, I saw unlike English language, certain consonants, you just put them together. So I just kind of made my name up and came up with abbreviations.”
As for the artist battling ignorance, Bayoc said he always tries to learn and improve himself.
“Honestly, it's more about me just continuing to learn and remind myself I don't know everything,” he said. “So it's really more attachment to myself than what I do with my art.”
Friends of MLK and project partners will host a public dedication ceremony at the mural on Wednesday, June 24, at 11 a.m., for which Bayoc will not be present. Friends of MLK will host the Quad City Juneteenth Festival on Saturday, June 20, on 2nd Street in Davenport, between Harrison and Brady Streets. The festival will run from 11 a.m. – 4 p.m.
This festival is complete with food and retail vendors; local and national history information; community and resource booths; and fun-filled games and live entertainment for the whole family.
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