Roger Casement on the Rainbow Honour Walk

Roger Casement, a gay Irishman originally from Dublin, gave his life for the cause of Irish freedom. He leaves a legacy as an Irish patriot and a peerless human rights campaigner who was never less than courageous and principled in his pursuit of justice.

Casement’s legacy lives on and continues to inspire human rights campaigns throughout the world today.

After joining the British Foreign Ministry in 1901, and acting as Consul at Boma in the Free Congo, Casement investigated and exposed gross human rights abuses in the so-called "Congo Free State" then the private possession of King Leopold II of Belgium. Leopold’s private militia enslaved, tortured and murdered Congolese men, women, and children who were forced to extract raw rubber for market profit, and Leopold’s personal wealth.

In 1904 the "Casement Report" was instrumental in producing major reforms in the Congo, helping to end Leopold's 23-year reign of terror. Casement continued his pioneering human rights work by exposing the injustices of the rubber trade in South America, before committing himself fully to the cause of Irish freedom, for which he was executed in 1916.

Casement’s Bar on Mission Street in San Francisco has the only mural of Roger Casement, the bar’s namesake, in San Francisco.

Owners Sean O’Donovan and Gillian Fitzgerald commissioned San Francisco artist and muralist Tanya Wischerath to paint it. Wischerath, who also painted two other murals for the bar (Sinead O’Connor and Dolores O’Riordain) created a tryptic of beloved and iconic Irish individuals upon its completion and unveiling in July 2025.

“I was vaguely familiar with Roger before starting this mural, but I did most of the research once I got the green light for the piece. One of the challenges was how to reference the horrendous crimes against humanity overseen by King Leopold without traumatising bar patrons with literal depictions. In that way, the stained glass motif worked very well because the history could be told through pre-established visual metaphor.

I took many visual cues from church windows of Saint Michael, slaying the serpent. I designed Casement looking outward, at the viewer, with the intention that despite the pedestal that iconographic imagery places under the subject, he would still read above all else as a human being.”

- Tanya Wischerath on painting the mural