Why is this appropriate for a high school mural?
“At the time, high school history classes typically ignored the incongruity that Washington and others among the nation’s founders subscribed to the declaration that ‘all men are created equal’ and yet owned other human beings as chattel,” Robert W. Cherny writes in “Victor Arnautoff and the Politics of Art.”
In other words, Arnautoff’s purpose was to unsettle the viewer, to provoke young people into looking at American history from a different, darker perspective. Over the past months, art historians, New Deal scholars and even a group called the Congress of Russian Americans have tried to make exactly that point.
I mean, gosh, the horror of young people confronting history.
I think there's a lot of public art in America that seems to lionise slave owners but I posted too soon.
Edit: maxerickson's reply is much better.
Think about it; how would you feel going to work every day if your office had murals of holocaust victims being sent into gas chambers? There's as valid a lesson to be learned from such a mural, but it's unnecessarily disturbing because it's out of context.
So no, the actual motive of San Francisco officials aside, I don't think it's appropriate for a high school mural.