National Great Blacks In Wax Museum

Last updated

The National Great Blacks in Wax Museum is a wax museum in Baltimore, Maryland featuring prominent African-American and other black historical figures. It was established in 1983, in a downtown storefront on Saratoga Street. [1]

Contents

The museum is currently located on 1601 East North Avenue in a renovated firehouse, a Victorian Mansion, and two former apartment dwellings that provide nearly 30,000 square feet (3,000 m2) of exhibit and office space. The exhibits feature over 100 wax figures and scenes, including: a full model slave ship exhibit which portrays the 400-year history of the Atlantic Slave Trade, an exhibit on the role of youth in making history, and a Maryland room highlighting the contributions to African American history by notable Marylanders. [2] The museum's co-founder, Dr. Joanne Martin, describes the importance of preserving Black history in this way, stating: 'everything else, it seems like a movie if you don't have a sense of exactly what people were fighting against.' [3]

History

The National Great Blacks in Wax museum is Baltimore's first wax museum and the first wax museum of African American history in the nation. The museum was started as a grassroots operation by Dr. Elmer Martin and his wife Dr. Joanne Martin. [4]

The idea of blacks in wax started with a few wax figures that were taken around to various schools, community centers, and malls. The museum was originally sponsored exclusively by Dr. Elmer Martin, his wife Dr. Joanne Martin, and donations from the community. In the early days, Dr. Elmer Martin was forced to ask his wife to sell her wedding ring to keep the moving exhibit going. However, it received national recognition in 1983 when the founding members were allotted grants, loans, and endowments to open a permanent exhibition. In 1988, Blacks in Wax received its permanent home on the 1600 block of North Avenue in the neighborhood of Oliver.

The site was originally home to a firehouse that was converted into a showhouse. In 2004, The Blacks in Wax Museum was recognized by the U.S. Congress as the "Nation's first wax museum presenting the history of great Black Americans" and subsequently became The National Blacks in Wax Museum. [5]

The following people have been depicted at the museum:

See also

Related Research Articles

Catonsville, Maryland Census-designated place in Maryland, United States

Catonsville is a census-designated place (CDP) in Baltimore County, Maryland, United States. The population was 41,567 at the 2010 census. The community lies to the west of Baltimore along the city's border. Catonsville contains the majority of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), a major public research university with close to 14,000 students.

An African American is a citizen or resident of the United States who has origins in any of the black populations of Africa. African American-related topics include:

Clarksville, Maryland Unincorporated community in Maryland

Clarksville is an unincorporated community in Howard County, Maryland; the second highest-earning county in the United States according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The community is named for William Clark, a farmer who owned much of the land on which the community now lies and served as a postal stop that opened on the 4th of July 1851.

<i>Night at the Museum</i> 2006 fantasy comedy film

Night at the Museum is a 2006 American fantasy comedy film directed by Shawn Levy and written by Robert Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon. It is based on the 1993 children's book The Night at the Museum by Croatian illustrator Milan Trenc. The film stars Ben Stiller, Carla Gugino, Dick Van Dyke, Mickey Rooney, Bill Cobbs, and Robin Williams. It tells the story of a divorced father who applies for a job as a night watchman at New York City's American Museum of Natural History and subsequently discovers that the exhibits, animated by a magical Egyptian artifact, come to life at night. 20th Century Fox released the film on December 22, 2006, and it grossed $574.5 million worldwide, becoming the 5th highest-grossing film of 2006, but received mixed reviews from critics.

Nat Turner's Rebellion was a rebellion of enslaved Virginians that took place in Southampton County, Virginia, in August 1831, led by Nat Turner. The rebels killed between 55 and 65 people, at least 51 of whom were white. The rebellion was put down within a few days, but Turner survived in hiding for more than two months afterwards. The rebellion was effectively suppressed at Belmont Plantation on the morning of August 23, 1831.

Baltimore Museum of Industry Industrial museum in Baltimore Maryland U.S.

Baltimore Museum of Industry is a museum in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. Located in an old cannery, the museum has exhibits on various types of manufacturing and industry from the early 20th century. There are several hands-on sections with working equipment and other artifacts.

Pratt Street Street in Baltimore

Pratt Street is a major street in Baltimore. It forms a one-way pair of streets with Lombard Street that run west–east through downtown Baltimore. For most of their route, Pratt Street is one-way in an eastbound direction, and Lombard Street is one way westbound. Both streets begin in west Baltimore at Frederick Avenue and end in Butcher's Hill at Patterson Park Avenue. Since 2005, these streets have been open to two-way traffic from Broadway until their end at Patterson Park. Although Lombard is also a two-way street from Fulton Avenue to Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, Pratt is still one-way eastbound in this area.

Elmer P. Martin Jr. was an African-American sociologist and museum executive.

Oliver, Baltimore Neighborhood of Baltimore in Maryland, United States

Oliver is a neighborhood in the Eastern district of Baltimore, Maryland. Its boundaries are the south side of North Avenue, the east side of Ensor Street, the west side of Broadway, and the north side of Biddle Street. This neighborhood, adjacent to Johns Hopkins Medical Campus and minutes from the Inner Harbor, lies east of the historic Greenmount Cemetery. The neighborhood is accessible by several bus lines, the Johns Hopkins metro station, Charm City Circulator, Pennsylvania Station (Baltimore), and freeway.

Daniel Coker

Daniel Coker (1780–1846), born Isaac Wright, was an African American of mixed race from Baltimore, Maryland; after he gained freedom from slavery, he became a Methodist minister. He wrote one of the few pamphlets published in the South that protested against slavery and supported abolition. In 1816 he helped found the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the first independent black denomination in the United States, at its first national convention in Philadelphia.

Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History & Culture

The Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African-American History & Culture is the premier experience and best resource for information and inspiration about the lives of African American Marylanders. The Lewis Museum's mission is to collect, preserve, interpret, document, and exhibit the rich contributions of African American Marylanders using its collection of over 11,000 documents and objects and resources drawn from across the country.

Jonestown, Baltimore Neighborhood of Baltimore in Maryland, United States

Jonestown is a neighborhood in the southeastern district of Baltimore. Its boundaries are the north side of Pratt Street, the west side of Central Avenue, the east side of Fallsway, and the south side of Orleans Street. The neighborhood lies north of the Little Italy, south of the Old Town, west of the Washington Hill, and east of the Downtown Baltimore neighborhoods. The southern terminus of the Jones Falls Expressway is located here.

The following is a timeline of the history of the city of Baltimore, Maryland, USA.

McCallum + Tarry is the professional artistic collaboration between Bradley McCallum and Jacqueline Tarry, a partnership the artists began in 1999. McCallum and Tarry, who are European American and African American, respectively, are best known for their creative layering of film, audio, painting, photography, and self-portraiture to examine social inequality and the legacy of race in the United States.

John Henry Pinkard was a businessman, banker, and herb doctor in Roanoke, Virginia. He was also known as a spiritualist and clairvoyant. Other people considered him a practitioner of quackery and a charlatan.

The Griot Museum of Black History

The Griot Museum of Black History, located in St. Louis, Missouri, was founded in 1997. Originally named The Black World History Wax Museum, the organization changed its name to The Griot Museum of Black History in 2009. In some west African countries, the griot, is a historian, storyteller, praise singer, poet and/or musician. The griot is a repository of oral tradition and is often seen as a societal leader who preserves and shares cultural traditions of a community. Likewise, the museum collects, preserves, and shares the stories, culture, and history of Black people with a focus on those with a regional connection to St. Louis.

Agnes Kane Callum

Agnes Kane Callum was a genealogist known for her research into Maryland's African-American history. She was a founding member of the Baltimore Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society, a frequent columnist for The Catholic Review, and the founding editor of a black genealogical journal, Flower of the Forest. Callum was inducted into the Maryland Women's Hall of Fame in 2014.

History of African Americans in Baltimore

The history of African Americans in Baltimore dates back to the 17th century when the first African slaves were being brought to the Province of Maryland. Majority white for most of its history, Baltimore transitioned to having a black majority in the 1970s. As of the 2010 Census, African Americans are the majority population of Baltimore at 63% of the population. As a majority black city for the last several decades with the 5th largest population of African Americans of any city in the United States, African Americans have had an enormous impact on the culture, dialect, history, politics, and music of the city. Unlike many other Northern cities whose African-American populations first became well-established during the Great Migration, Baltimore has a deeply rooted African-American heritage, being home to the largest population of free black people half a century before the Emancipation Proclamation. The migrations of Southern and Appalachian African Americans between 1910 and 1970 brought thousands of African Americans to Baltimore, transforming the city into the second northernmost majority-black city in the United States after Detroit. The city's African-American community is centered in West Baltimore and East Baltimore. The distribution of African Americans on both the West and the East sides of Baltimore is sometimes called "The Black Butterfly", while the distribution of white Americans in Central and Southeast Baltimore is called "The White L."

<i>Landscape with Rainbow</i> (Duncanson) Painting by Robert S. Duncanson

Landscape with Rainbow is an oil on canvas painting by the African-American artist Robert S. Duncanson. The Hudson River School landscape painting was completed in 1859, while Duncanson was living in Cincinnati, Ohio. It has been in the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C. since 1983.

Thomas Patton Miller (1945-2000), who went by the name Tom Miller, was a Baltimore artist best known for his "Afro-Deco" painted furniture. He was born in the Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood and attended Carver Vocational Technical High School. In 1963, he received a scholarship to the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). After graduation, he taught art in the Baltimore City public schools for two decades before returning to MICA for his MFA, which he received in 1987.

References

  1. "National Great Blacks In Wax Museum". www.greatblacksinwax.org. Retrieved 2019-05-20.
  2. "National Great Blacks In Wax Museum". www.greatblacksinwax.org. Retrieved 2019-05-20.
  3. "B.A. Parker, This American Life Episode 627: 'Suitable for Children: History is Not a Toy (Act Two)' National Public Radio (6 October 2017)".
  4. "National Great Blacks In Wax Museum". www.greatblacksinwax.org. Retrieved 2019-05-20.
  5. "National Great Black Americans Commemoration Act of 2004, S. 1233,108th Cong. (2004)".

Sources

Coordinates: 39°18′42″N76°35′49″W / 39.3118°N 76.59687°W / 39.3118; -76.59687