Just east of downtown San Diego, the sounds of the trolley and the busy Imperial Avenue and Commercial Street corridors create the rhythm of an urban community.
It's there in Logan Heights at Clementine McDuff Elks Lodge #598 where muralists are honoring the musical legacy and civil rights history of the neighborhood.
“We are at Commercial and Hensley. Kind of the crux of the whole soul-roots of this area,” muralist Mario Torero said.
A large-scale mural honoring San Diego's African American and Chicano music legends was recently unveiled on the building.
It features community leaders and the jazz, soul, and garage band musicians who shaped Imperial Avenue's music scene.
Torero, of Barrio Artists Partnership, is one of the main artists helping to make it happen. He’s also one of the founding muralists of San Diego’s globally renowned Chicano Park.
Torero was raised around the Logan Heights community and remembers segregation as a teenager.
“We moved in an area which eventually part of the Black section of San Diego, and I was forced to go to Memorial Junior High. The Black school at the time in 1960,” he said.
During the midcentury, Clementine McDuff Elks Lodge was a stop on the Chitlin' Circuit. That's a network of venues where Black musicians performed during segregation.
Many of the artists honored in the mural are locals or those who played there in person.
“I played in this guy here back in 1964, 1965. I was playing with ‘Arlene and the Proteens,’ the number one Black band, dance band in San Diego,” Torero said of the building. “We played here, I opened up for Etta James with the group."
Other big names that played the venue include legendary San Diego music entrepreneur, producer, and musician George Semper and global stars, like Billie Holiday and Nat King Cole.
A painting of Cole is still visible on the stage inside the building to this day.
“Now that it's no longer the Black section of town they say, we still have to know the history,” Torero said.
The building also serves as a hub for the San Diego Original Black Panther Party. A tribute to them was created by a visiting LA-based aerosol crew and can be seen on the side of the building facing Commercial Street.
“We had a connection with the Black Panthers first — the Original Black Panthers — which works with the Elks Lodge doing food distribution,” Renard “Hawk” Hilliard said.
He is both an Elks Lodge and local Black Panther member.
“The San Diego Black Panther Party joined the Elks (Lodge) about a year and a half ago and they started renting a space upstairs,” he said.
Hilliard has been with both organizations for less than five years, but grew up in the area. He said this Elks Lodge has been at the same location since 1955 and in the community for over 100 years.
“For the most part Black entertainers were limited on where they could go. This is the one space that catered to the Black community and provided opportunity for entertainers to come,” Hilliard said.
The mural isn't finished yet. There were some last minute changes made on the Commercial Street side of the building.
“Hawk” said the recent death of their Elks Lodge leader Daniel Davis gives the work extra meaning. They plan to display him and other members on the exterior walls.
“It was quite a surprise that he passed,” he said. “I had just spoken with him two days before and we were just discussing the agreements we had for the murals on the building and to do something to represent the Elks on the building.”
Hilliard hopes that by documenting and painting the history of this neighborhood, it will inspire the artists and activists of today.
“We want to bring music back, we just want to bring community together and just emphasize all the different things we do in the Black community,” Hilliard said.
The murals are part of the Imperial Avenue Legacy Project, which is funded by grants from the Prebys Foundation and the California Arts Council.
