Alston's murals were hung in the Women's Pavilion of the hospital over uncapped radiators, which caused the paintings to deteriorate from the steam. Plans failed to recap the radiators. In 1959 Alston estimated, in a letter to the Department of Public Works, that the conservation would cost $1,500 but the funds were never acquired. In 1968, after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., Alston was asked to create another mural for the hospital, to be placed in a pavilion named after the slain civil rights movement leader. It was to be titled "Man Emerging from the Darkness of Poverty and Ignorance into the Light of a Better World."