Brooklyn Wedding At BLM Mural To Show 'Black Love Matters'

BED-STUY, BROOKLYN — Makeita Wilson was walking along the Black Lives Matter mural on Fulton Street one day in June, taking selfies, when her daughter started asking questions.

"She started asking me...who was Emmett Till, George Floyd, Michael Brown, Eric Garner — to name a few," Wilson said.

Wilson told her 10-year-old to research the names and, as she always does, talked to her about not spreading hate no matter a person's race, sex or religion.

But later that night, Wilson, who was supposed to get married in July, couldn't get the mural out of her mind. Then came an idea.

"I was laying in bed and had the craziest thought of getting married on the mural," she told Patch. "Through all the tragedies that's going on in the the world, [I thought], let's put some happiness and love back into the universe."

Two months later, her idea will become a reality.

Wilson is set to marry her fiancé, Shancton Thompson, at the Black Lives Matter mural on Saturday with a socially-distanced ceremony they hope will show the world that "Black Love Matters."

The wedding will be a longtime coming for the couple, who have been engaged since April 2019 and together for more than a decade.

Wilson, who is from Brownsville, and Thompson, who was raised in Fort Greene, had planned to get married in July, but, like many couples, had to put the wedding on hold when the coronavirus hit New York City.

Instead, they will bring about 30 close family and friends to Fulton Street, which became the first street in New York City to don a Black Lives Matter mural when it was painted June 15.

Those 30 will include the couple's blended family, which Wilson says was one of the main reasons they fell in love 11 years ago.

"One particular date he invited me over for dinner — we talked all night long and fell in love with a conversation," she said.

"We had so many things in common, we love music, fashion and our children. We both had two outside children that mean the world to us — he has two girls and I have two boys — and a year later we had a daughter together."

Wilson and Thompson's wedding will join a slate of other celebrations and activities that have been held at the mural since it was painted in June, including a line-up ready for Saturday.

The weekly activities are set up by a group called The Bed-Stuy Mural Collective.

"In a community that is being torn apart by a global pandemic and gun violence, the couple...wanted to share their joy with the community and felt this was a great way to spread love the Brooklyn way," the collective's spokesperson Keith L. Forest said.

Here's the full schedule for Saturday:

• 8:30 a.m.: Meditation and Exercise for Seniors
• 9:30 a.m.: Meditation for Black Lives
• 10 a.m.: Stacked Yoga on the Mural
• 10 a.m.: Socarobics with Baolay
• 11 a.m.: Wedding
• 12 p.m.: African Dance with Tamara Jones
• 12:30 p.m.: Skaterobics: Roller Skating Basics
• 3 p.m.: Bed-Stuy Marching Band Showcase with a Historic Black Colleges & University tribute
• 4 p.m.: Summer Jazz Swing feat. Lesedi Ntsane
• 8 p.m.: "Saturday Vibes" with DJ Trauma

Modern MD will be on hand to take temperatures and distribute PPE.