Paint Me a Road Out of Here

What happens when a legendary Black artist paints freedom onto the walls of Rikers Island—and the system tries to bury it?

I first saw the story on Colossal, which highlighted a Chicago screening and the mural’s wild journey from prison wall to museum spotlight.

Trailer for “Paint Me a Road Out of Here”

You Can’t Make This Sh!t Up

• In 1971, women incarcerated at Rikers asked Faith Ringgold to paint “a road leading out of here.” She created an 8×8-foot mural showing women in jobs they were told they could never have. Even the president of the United States.
• In 1988, when the jail converted the women’s facility into men’s housing, prison staff covered the now-million-dollar mural in thick white paint. It sat hidden for decades.
• Mary Baxter gave birth shackled to a hospital bed for 43 hours while incarcerated at Rikers in 2010. Years later, she helped lead the charge to free Ringgold’s mural from the same jail.

Watch “Paint Me a Road Out of Here”

“Paint Me a Road Out of Here” is not available for streaming right now. You can check for updates here: JustWatch.

Ratings:

• My Rating: 92/100
• IMDB Rating: 8.9/10
• Rotten Tomatoes: not yet rated

Director’s Note: Directed by Catherine Gund, this documentary runs about 90 minutes. Gund blends archival footage from the 1970s, interviews with Ringgold, and present-day activism around New York’s justice system.

Release Date: 2024

My Review of “Paint Me a Road Out of Here”

The Setup

Faith Ringgold was already a bold, political artist in the early 1970s. But when she walked into Rikers Island, she didn’t come in with a lecture. She listened.

The women wanted hope. They wanted to see themselves as more than inmates.

So Ringgold painted women operating heavy machinery. Women in lab coats. Women flying planes. This was 1971—long before these images felt normal. The mural was radical. Then the system erased it.

More Highlights from the Doc

• We see Ringgold working inside Rikers and talking with incarcerated women about what they wanted in the mural.
• The doc explains how the mural became “inappropriate” once the women’s unit was converted into men’s housing—because it centered women.
• Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter, now an artist and organizer, pushes the mural back into public view through protests, performances, and pressure campaigns.
• Curators, activists, politicians, and corrections staff argue about the big question: should the mural live inside a jail for the women, or in a museum where the whole city can see it?
• The film ties the mural’s fate to the bigger movement to close Rikers Island—because “freeing the painting” is also about freeing the women.

Lesser-Know Details from the Doc

• Conservators had to restore the mural after decades under white paint, working carefully to pull Ringgold’s original colors back out.
• Ringgold did not paint prison uniforms into the mural. She wanted the women shown as free and capable, not defined by incarceration.
• Moving the work to the Brooklyn Museum creates a real tension the doc doesn’t dodge: does that “free” it, or does it remove it from the women it was created for?

Wrap Up:

“Paint Me a Road Out of Here” is about who gets written into history, and who gets painted over. If you like this one, check out my colleague Rob Kelly’s list of The Top 30+ Prison Documentaries (Ranked with 2026 Update).

Thanks for reading!
Heather Fenty, Guest Writer, Daily Doc