through New Deal support for unemployed artists during the Great Depression. The works have come under criticism for the realistic depiction of the African-American slaves and white indentured servants that George Washington had on his Mount Vernon estate. Another mural, intended as a criticism of Manifest Destiny, depicts in an allegorical manner four pioneers who tread over and beside a dead Native American. In 1974 the school added three murals by artist Dewey Crumpler to assuage complaints and Crumpler argues that the students at that time issued an apology for failing to understand the meaning of the works and the devices used by Arnautoff to convey the realities of history. The proposed destruction has received national attention. Preservation of the murals has garnered broad support. The College Art Association has supported the murals, and an open letter demanding the preservation of the murals was signed by 400 prominent scholars and artists, including Wendy Brown, Judith Butler, T.J. Clark, Jodi Dean, Carol Duncan, Nancy Fraser, Hal Foster, Michael Fried, David Harvey, Andrew Hemingway, Fredric Jameson, Joyce Kozloff, Lucy Lippard, Walter Benn Michaels, Adolph Reed Jr., Martha Rosler, Anne M. Wagner, Allan Wallach as well as Rocco Landesman, former Chairman for the National Endowment for the Arts. San Francisco Heritage, a non-profit devoted to preserving the city's artistic and architectural legacy, proposed the school be designated a historic landmark on the basis of this and other features. Alice Walker, whose daughter attended the school, suggested that explanations be added to provide context: “If you cover things up, the danger is that you will end up in the same place again, and you won’t even recognize it.” Robert W. Cherny, an authority on the work of Arnautoff, argued at a 2018 SFUSD Board of Education meeting that Arnautoff was very consciously representing slavery and genocide in an effort to counter the storybook representations of Washington that students were taught in the 1930s. The school's Alumni Association supports the murals, as do the majority of students. Among the other groups who defend the murals are the California College of the Arts, the San Francisco Art Institute, the United Public Workers for Action, the National New Deal Preservation Association, and the National Coalition Against Censorship. On September 24, 2021, the San Francisco Superior Court determined that the SFUSD School Board had violated California environmental law and required that the School Board void its unlawful actions