Paleontologist Mural, Laramie Wyoming

Indian Mural, Laramie Wyoming

I know that this mural's image is taken from a photograph, but unfortunately I don't know who the photograph was of.  Should anyone recognize the subject, let us know who it is in the comments.

Cowgirls, Laramie Wyoming

Wyoming Scenes Mural. Laramie Wyoming

Another Laramie alley mural, this one featuring various scenes of Wyoming, both current and historical.

Tree Mural, Laramie Wyoming

We noted this mural a couple of days ago when the larger mural next to it was featured.  Here's a closure view.

The Black Fourteen, Laramie Wyoming Mural

The Black Fourteen were fourteen University of Wyoming football players who lost their positions on the football team in 1969 when they sought to wear black armbands during a scheduled football game between UW and BYU.

As noted in our entry on our companion blog, Some Gave All;

The action was intended to protest the policy of the Mormon church in excluding blacks from leadership roles in their church.  Coach Eaton, the UW football coach at the time, dismissed all fourteen players prior to the game, ending their football careers at UW and, at least in some cases, simply ending them entirely.

As also noted in that entry, which depicted a memorial in the UW Student Union, and which was posted in 2017:

The event was controversial at the time, and to a lesser degree, has remained so.  Generally, in most of Wyoming, Coach Eaton was supported, rather than the players, which doesn't mean that the players did not have support.  As time has gone on, however, views have changed and generally the players are regarded as heroes for their stand.  Views on Eaton are qualified, with some feeling he was in the wrong, and others feeling that he was between a rock and a hard place and acted as best as he could, even if that was not for the best.

It is indeed possible even now to see both sides of the dramatic event.  The players wanted to wear black armbands in protest of the Mormon's policy of not allowing blacks to be admitted to the Mormon priesthood and therefore also excluding them from positions of leadership in the Mormon church.  This policy was well know in much of Wyoming as the Mormon theology behind it, which held that blacks were descendant of an unnatural union on the part of Noah's son Cain, resulted in black human beings.  This was unlikely to be widely known, however, amongst blacks at the University of Wyoming, most of whom (but not all of which) came from outside of the state.  A week or so prior to the UW v. BYU game, however, Willie Black, a black doctoral candidate at UW who was not on the football team, learned of the policy.  Black was head of the Black Students Alliance and called for a protest.  The plan to wear armbands then developed.

The protest, therefore, came in the context of a civil rights vs. religious concepts background, a tough matter in any context.  To make worse, it also came during the late 60s which was a time of protest, and there had been one against the Vietnam War just days prior to the scheduled game. Following that, Eaton reminded his players of UW's policy against student athletes participating in any demonstration, a policy which raises its own civil liberties concern. The players went ahead with tehir plans and Eaton removed all of them from the team.

Looked at now, it remains easy to see why Eaton felt that he had to act, while also feeling that he acted much too harshly.  Not everyone agrees with this view by any means, however.  Many, but a declining number, still feel Eaton was right.  A much larger number feel he was definitely wrong.  Few hold a nuanced view like I've expressed.  Even those who felt that Eaton was right often admire the protesting players, however.

Anyway its looked at, the Black 14 are now a definite part of Wyoming's legacy as The Equality State, even if most of them were not from here (at least one, and maybe more, were).  This year at Wyoming History Day, a statewide high school history presentation competition, which had the theme of "taking a stand", they were the subject of one static display and two video presentations.  They may be more well remembered now than at any time since the late 1970s, and this memorial in the student union certainly contributes to that.

The mural is located in an alley in downtown Laramie.  As noted earlier in this series of posts, downtown Laramie has had a mural project and, in fact, most of the murals are located along the same alley over the course of several blocks.

Big Hollow Natural Foods, The Second Story Bookstore, Laramie Wyoming

This is a mural I was sure I'd posted before, but apparently have not.  One of a collection of murals in downtown Laramie, Wyoming.

Indeed, these photographs show two separate murals, as there is the tree mural, apparently a nocturne, behind the one that is principally featured here.

Oops

A couple of days ago I noted that I'd thought I'd taken some photos of murals in Laramie and was surprised they weren't posted here.

And, indeed I had.  I just didn't post them at the time.  So I'm going to go back and do that now, leading to the oddity that the last two mural topics are more recent than those which are about to follows.

Fish Mural, Laramie Wyoming

Trees and Hills Mural, Downtown Laramie, Wyoming.

There has been an extensive mural project in downtown Laramie Wyoming in recent years.  Indeed, I thought that I'd posted a set of photographs on Laramie murals before, and I'm pretty sure that I've taken a collection of them, but I can't see that I posted them.

This mural is a fanciful landscape featuring animated trees.