Project Location: Downtown Edenton, 178 South Broad Street, Edenton, NC.
Project Overview: The Edenton mural by Max Dowdle commemorates the 250th anniversary of the Edenton Tea Party, a pivotal moment in American history that originated in this small North Carolina town. Installed in downtown Edenton on South Broad Street, the mural honors the fifty-one women who signed the Edenton Resolves in 1774, staging one of the earliest documented political actions by women in the American colonies. Their collective refusal to purchase or consume British tea positioned Edenton at the forefront of revolutionary dissent.
Dowdle’s mural approaches the event not as distant patriot mythology, but as an assertion of civic courage and organized resolve. The composition emphasizes unity as well as individual heroics, portraying the signers as an interconnected force, united with Colonial American Activist Penelope Barker. Through deliberate scale, gesture, and rhythm, the mural situates women’s political agency as foundational rather than peripheral to the American story.
Embedded within Edenton’s historic streetscape, the mural functions as both commemoration and interruption, inviting passersby to encounter a radical act that unfolded in ordinary domestic spaces. It reframes public space as a site of memory where dissent, community, and authorship converge.
As part of Edenton’s broader America 250 celebrations, the mural reinforces the town’s role in shaping national identity. Within Dowdle’s wider body of public work, the Edenton Tea Party mural asserts that history is not only inherited, but actively re-encountered, and ultimately made present through visibility, scale, and collective remembrance.