The University of Kentucky has been sued by Award-winning Kentucky writer Wendell Berry and his wife to try to stop the removal of a mural of Black people and Native Americans.

The 1930s fresco mural by Ann Rice O’Hanlon shows the history of Lexington in a series of scenes, including Black men and women planting tobacco and a Native American man holding a tomahawk. Efforts to remove the mural have been made since at least 2006.

University President Eli Capilouto announced last month that the mural would be coming down.

According to the law suit the federal government gave the state limited rights to the artwork and those rights transfer back to the federal government if the state chooses to no longer display it.

It also asks for an injunction to prevent Capilouto from taking any action to remove the mural while the case proceeds.

The university said in a statement that removing the mural is necessary for the community to heal.

“Our respect for Wendell Berry is deep and abiding. His contributions to our state and literature are profound. Moving art, however, is not erasing history. It is, rather, creating context to further dialogue as well as space for healing,” school spokesman Jay Blanton said in a statement. “As President Capilouto wrote to our campus last month, after years of community conversation, ‘our efforts and solutions with the mural, for many of our students, have been a roadblock to reconciliation, rather than a path toward healing.’”