The Black Christ Domed Ceiling Mural--Detroit Art Treasure in Peril

The Black Christ by DeVon Cunningham. Notice the water damage on Jesus' robe and the mold around the edges of the mural.

In 1969, Detroit artist DeVon Cunningham achieved national recognition when he painted the Black Christ inside the dome of St. Cecilia’s Catholic Church on Detroit’s Westside. This French Romanesque church was built in 1930 at the beginning of the Great Depression when the parish congregants were mostly White.

After the second world war, White flight to the suburbs began changing the ethnicity of the neighborhood from White to mostly Black. The church's name was changed in 2013 to Charles Lawanga Parish to reflect the shift in ethnicity of the neighborhood.

In 1968, Parish priest Father Raymond Ellis responded to a protest demonstration in 1968 of St. Cecilia’s high school students who no longer accepted the traditional blonde, blue-eyed, light-skinned Jesus they saw in their religious literature and statuary. Father Ellis commissioned local artist and parish member DeVon Cunningham to paint a mural of a Black Christ on the dome above the altar. Parishioners welcomed the hopeful, comforting mural with open arms.

The mural featured a twenty-four-foot, brown-skinned image of Jesus flanked by six angels serving High Mass—one is Native American, another is Asian, two are White, and two are Black, set against a celestial background. The figures painted at the bottom of the mural along the cloud line represent notable church and historic figures like Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King. The size and splendor of the mural is awe inspiring.

Working eighty-five feet above the altar, Cunningham, who had a fear of heights, was strapped to a scaffold for eight months to complete the work. The original church architect who designed St. Cecilia was recruited to geometrically calculate the correct proportions of the figures due to the curvature of the dome.

A national controversy erupted when an image of the Black Christ appeared on the cover of Ebony magazine in March of 1969. The very idea of a Black Christ shook many White American Christians to the foundations of their faith.

Responding to local criticism, parish priest Father Ellis explained in a Detroit Free Press interview that “Black parishioners have a legitimate complaint when they walk into a church to worship and everything is White. Christianity forces people to accept the ethnocentrism of Western European culture. The historical Jesus was Hebrew, a Jew from the Middle East. He may have had dark skin; he might have been fair-skinned. But Christ is the head of the church, he is God, and he is any color people want him to be.”

The widespread belief in the United States of a White Christ can be traced to 1924, when commercial illustrator Warner Sallman made a charcoal sketch of Jesus for his church. Sixteen years later in 1940, Sallman believed he had a moment of divine inspiration when he painted his sketch into an oil painting for an Evangelical magazine. The painting was named Head of Christ. 

From there, the Gospel Trumpet Company, the publishing arm of the Church of God, bought the rights and widely published various sized lithographic images of Sallman’s painting for sale throughout the Southern United States, the Salvation Army, the YMCA, and the USO. Wallet sized versions were handed out to soldiers during World War II.

Head of Christ by Warner Sallman

After the war, Christian groups began to widely distribute the image publicly. During the Cold War, one Lutheran spokesperson proclaimed, “There ought to be ‘card-carrying Christians’ to counter the effect of ‘card-carrying Communists’.” In midcentury America, the image was widely distributed as a reaction to the Red Scare and the threat of Godless atheism.

The Face of Christ painting was the accepted depiction of Jesus for many Americans. It has been reproduced well over 500 million times in portraits, prayer and mass cards, illustrations in Bibles, Sunday school literature, church bulletins and calendars, posters, buttons, and bumper stickers deeply etching it into the imaginations of true believers. Sallman’s painting depicted a light-haired, pale-skinned, blue-eyed Jesus with Nordic features. After all, Sallman was the son of Scandinavian immigrants.

Most White Americans could not accept the idea of an ethnic Jesus despite the many works of art that have appeared since antiquity to modern times. When DeVon Cunningham painted his mural of the Black Christ, he had no intention of making a political statement or creating an incident.

Twenty-five years later, the Cunningham mural once again became a topic of controversy when the New York Times ran an article on Christmas Day in 1994 entitled “Just Who Was Jesus?" Four images of Jesus ran with the article, The Redeemer, a mosaic from the 12th century; Christ by Flemish painter Anthony Van Dyck in the 17th century; the Head of Christ by Warner E. Sallman in 1940, and the Black Christ by DeVon Cunningham in 1969.

Cunningham’s Black Christ gained international prominence again in 2009 when the Vatican and Pope Benedict XVI sent out Christmas cards with four depictions of Christ’s image, three from antiquity and the fourth being the Black Christ by DeVon Cunningham, the only living artist to be so honored. DeVon Cunningham passed away on July 31, 2023, at the age of eighty-eight.

DeVon Cunningham

In 2024, parishioners began noticing Jesus’ robe was becoming discolored from a leak in the roof. Other parts of the mural were also showing moisture, mold, and mildew damage, most notably around the edges of the dome. Because of other expensive repairs necessary to restore the church building, the Archdiocese of Detroit made the difficult decision to close the parish. The last mass held in Charles Lawanga Parish was on October 12, 2025.

It would be a shame for Detroit to lose such an acclaimed work of religious art, but the die is cast. Ways are being explored to commemorate the mural photographically and restore it digitally to reveal and preserve its full grandeur. The hope is that the mural will be enshrined in an exhibit in one of the city’s fine museums for future generations to appreciate this great work and the artist who created it.

DeVon Cunningham Short Bio

DeVon Cunningham website