The city of Washington, D.C., is echoing a call for justice by naming a road and painting an unmissable message on a street that leads to the White House: Black lives matter.

A section of 16th Street in front of the White House is now called Black Lives Matter Plaza, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser announced Friday, 5 June, 2020. Earlier, the road was painted with huge yellow letters spelling out the name of the movement.

“We want to call attention today to making sure our nation is more fair and more just and that black lives and that black humanity matter in our nation,” Bowser said.

A green street sign reading Black Lives Matter Plaza was affixed Friday morning to a lamp post outside St. John’s church. That’s where federal forces used munitions and pepper spray on Monday to clear peaceful protesters and make way for President Donald Trump to take a photo outside the iconic yellow and white building, which was damaged by a fire during protests.

Before dawn Friday, a D.C. Department of Public Works crew closed the street so painting could begin. The yellow letters stretch from curb to curb of 16th Street NW between H and K streets.

The lettering is so large that the message stretches onto two city blocks and can only be fit into a single photo frame from high above. A bright yellow D.C. flag was painted after the message.

“It’s super pointed, it helps to correct from the terrible thing that happened at the church that’s right there,” one woman said, referring to St. John’s.

The two blocks are just north of Lafayette Square, where anti-police-brutality and anti-racism protesters have chanted “Black lives matter” for a week, moved by the death of George Floyd.

Around 11 a.m., a city worker walked onto a lift decorated with a city flag and a pro-D.C. statehood banner. The worker attached a new street sign labeling the road Black Lives Matter Plaza.

Bowser hadn’t publicly announced the move ahead of time. It appears to be another move in Bowser’s ongoing spar with President Trump over the use of federal forces in DC.

“There was a dispute this week about whose street this is,” the mayor’s chief of staff, John Falcicchio, said on Twitter. “Mayor Bowser wanted to make it abundantly clear that this is DC’s street and to honor demonstrators who peacefully protesting on Monday evening.”

District leaders are also showing support for a movement decrying the deaths of Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and other African Americans as consequences of an inequitable, racially biased justice system.

Black Lives Matter DC asked the mayor’s office to match words with action, saying in a tweet, “This is performative and a distraction from her inaction and active counter organizing to our demands to decrease the police budget and invest in community.” 

On 16th St., Public Works crews are making space between H & K Streets NW – by Lafayette Square – to paint the phrase “Black Lives Matter.” It comes after a week of protests, and ahead of what’s expected to be a large demonstration Saturday

Once complete, the mural will be hard to miss. Each letter stretches from curb to curb along 16th St.

Protesters stood in the pouring rain on Thursday night, 4 June, in their seventh straight night of large demonstrations after Floyd was killed when a former Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for more than eight minutes.

On Saturday, thousands of people are expected to march in downtown D.C. in the largest demonstration yet in the capital.

For more on this story, go to NBC Washington.