Black Madonna Makes Her Mark in Least Religious State

On the side of the public library in the biggest city in the least religious state in the U.S., the Virgin Mary holds the infant Christ. "Black Freedom, Black Madonna & the Black Child of Hope," a 16-by-12-foot mural on the south-facing exterior wall of the Fletcher Free Library in Burlington, Vermont, is the creation of Raphaella Brice, a 26-year-old Haitian American artist who is drawing deep from the font of her cultural identity and faith. In the process, she's injecting new spiritual energy into a state often imagined to be strictly secular.