The mural’s name, Soul of the Black Bottom, comes from the neighborhood’s history of demolition and displacement. Most of the original “Black Bottom” neighborhood was razed to make way for urban renewal in the 1960s, with thousands of residents displaced as a result, ranging in estimates from about 4,500 to 15,000 people. “Soul of the Black Bottom” is written in Arabic on the right side of the wall, while the following W.E.B. Du Bois quote appears in Arabic on the left side of the wall and on the brick wall:

"I believe that all men, black and brown and white, are brothers, varying through time and opportunity, in form and gift and feature, but differing in no essential particular, and alike in soul and the possibility of infinite development.