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Black Lives Matter Mural Unveiled On Fulton Street In Bedford-Stuyvesant

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- The Big Apple now has its first Black Lives Matter street mural.

Volunteers came together to pull off the big project, which has a big message.

Big bold yellow letters form the words "Black Lives Matter" along Fulton Street in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn.

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Public art with a political message.

"I just felt a very strong sense of hope. It had a very emotional significance for me," resident LaClaire Robinson told CBS2's Natalie Duddridge on Sunday.

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Robinson recently traveled to Washington D.C. to protest police brutality. She said she was moved by a similar mural painted near the White House.

Now, she has inspirational art blocks from her home.

"Things aren't going to change immediately, but it's still going to give hope for the future," Robinson said.

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Dozens of artists and local volunteers worked together to paint the Bed-Stuy piece Saturday into Sunday. Dr. Indira Etwaroo is the executive artistic director of the Billie Holiday Theatre, which helped coordinate the project.

"We are putting in over four pages of names of men and women who have been killed due to racial violence in the United States," Etwaroo said. "You are going to see everyone from Emmett Till to Freddie Gray to Michael Brown, Sandra Bland, Breanna Taylor ... it's heartbreaking the amount of names we're going to be embedding."

In their honor, Councilman Robert Cornegy Jr. is also pushing to make the several-block zone along Fulton Street car free.

"We would hope that this would be a plaza where we can come and gather, and really have conversations about the future. And really just a focal point for the change that we seek," Cornegy said.

The corridor along Fulton Street has been turned into an art canvas indefinitely. Organizers hope we'll see similar works of art for racial justice around the city.

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