New Black history billboard replaces anti-Trump billboard in Downtown Phoenix

PHOENIX - A colorful new billboard celebrating Black history has replaced the anti-Trump billboard in Downtown Phoenix.

The new billboard went up on the morning of Jan. 27 along Grand Avenue, near 11th Avenue, and it reads: Black History Matters. 1619 & Beyond. The billboard went as Black History Month, which is celebrated in February, approaches.

The new billboard was created by Gizette Knight, founder of Reality Dreams LLC, and James D’Angelico. 

Beatrice Moore, Managing Director of the Grand Avenue Arts & Preservation, owns the billboard.

Moore tells FOX 10 she offered the billboard space for free for the next year. In September 2020, the City of Phoenix rejected Knight's request to install a Black Lives Matter mural along a Downtown city street.

In 2020, FOX 10 spoke with Moore during a Juneteenth March in Phoenix in June, following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

"Juneteenth is a celebratory day, but today, we’re saying we got work to do," Moore said at the time. "Our ancestors went through it, you know, and in 1965. Dr. Martin Luther King went through it, and we’re going through it again. No more. My nieces, my nephews, my grandkids should not have to go through this again."

The new billboard replaces an anti-Trump billboard put up in December, which showed the now-former president in a prison jumpsuit and behind bars. The original anti-Trump billboard was replaced in 2020 with a message promoting free and fair elections and human rights.

Those billboards were created by Southern California artist Karen Fiorito. Moore commissioned that art.