(nyt) Jim Helman said he was skeptical 10 years ago when a city official suggested that residents of his racially divided neighborhood work together to paint a mural with the theme of racial unity. “I failed to see how some silly mural was going to create equality and justice,” said Mr. Helman, 62, a community organizer and retired nightclub owner. But in a series of community meetings, his doubts evaporated as black and white residents began to work together, first on the composition of the mural and then on a variety of neighborhood issues like trash collection and street repair. The mural, titled “The Peace Wall” and depicting a dozen hands of different ethnicities overlaying one another on a sky-blue background, is a product of Philadelphia’s Mural Arts Program, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary this month. The program, which began as an anti-graffiti project in 1984, has produced more than 2,800 murals throughout the city, many covering whole walls of row houses in low-income neighborhoods, and it has won praise for building civic pride and helping to heal racial divisions.

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