Great Blacks in Wax Museum
Encyclopedia
The National Great Blacks in Wax Museum is a wax museum
in Baltimore
, Maryland
featuring prominent African-American historical figures. It was established in 1983.
, an exhibit on the role of youth in making history, a Maryland
room highlighting the contributions of outstanding Marylanders to African American history, a gift shop, and a mini auditorium for lectures, films, and dramatic presentations.
Wax museum
A wax museum or waxworks consists of a collection of wax sculptures representing famous people from history and contemporary personalities exhibited in lifelike poses....
in Baltimore
Baltimore
Baltimore is the largest independent city in the United States and the largest city and cultural center of the US state of Maryland. The city is located in central Maryland along the tidal portion of the Patapsco River, an arm of the Chesapeake Bay. Baltimore is sometimes referred to as Baltimore...
, Maryland
Maryland
Maryland is a U.S. state located in the Mid Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware to its east...
featuring prominent African-American historical figures. It was established in 1983.
About
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. It is the brainchild of Dr's Elmer and Joanne Martin. The museum is currently located on 1601 East North Avenue in Baltimore, MD. The renovated firehouse, a Victorian Mansion, and two former apartment dwellings provide nearly 30000 square feet (2,787.1 m²) of exhibit and office space. The National Great Blacks in Wax museum features over 100 wax figures and scenes, a full model slave ship exhibit which portrays the 400 year history of the Atlantic Slave TradeAtlantic slave trade
The Atlantic slave trade, also known as the trans-atlantic slave trade, refers to the trade in slaves that took place across the Atlantic ocean from the sixteenth through to the nineteenth centuries...
, an exhibit on the role of youth in making history, a Maryland
Maryland
Maryland is a U.S. state located in the Mid Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware to its east...
room highlighting the contributions of outstanding Marylanders to African American history, a gift shop, and a mini auditorium for lectures, films, and dramatic presentations.
People featured in museum
The following people have been depicted at the museum:- Akhenaton
- Bishop Richard Allen
- Willard Allen
- Askia the Great
- Benjamin BannekerBenjamin BannekerBenjamin Banneker was a free African American astronomer, mathematician, surveyor, almanac author and farmer.-Family history and early life:It is difficult to verify much of Benjamin Banneker's family history...
- Ota BengaOta BengaOta Benga was a Congolese Mbuti pygmy known for being featured in a controversial human zoo exhibit at New York City's Bronx Zoo in 1906. Benga came to the United States through the action of businessman and missionary Samuel Phillips Verner...
- Bilal
- Rev. Andrew Bryan
- Henry "Box" Brown
- John BrownJohn Brown (abolitionist)John Brown was an American revolutionary abolitionist, who in the 1850s advocated and practiced armed insurrection as a means to abolish slavery in the United States. He led the Pottawatomie Massacre during which five men were killed, in 1856 in Bleeding Kansas, and made his name in the...
- Cripple Caesar
- Bessie ColemanBessie ColemanElizabeth “Bessie” Coleman was an American civil aviator. She was the first female pilot of African American descent and the first person of African American descent to hold an international pilot license.-Early life:...
- General Benjamin O. Davis
- W. E. B. Du Bois
- Harlow Fullwood
- Thomas GarrettThomas GarrettThomas Garrett was an abolitionist and leader in the Underground Railroad movement before the American Civil War....
- Jocko Graves
- Prince HallPrince HallPrince Hall , was a tireless abolitionist and a leader of the free black community in Boston. Hall tried to gain New England’s enslaved and free blacks a place in some of the most crucial spheres of society, Freemasonry, education and the military...
- Hannibal
- General Daniel "Chappie" James
- Toussaint L'OuvertureToussaint L'OuvertureFrançois-Dominique Toussaint Louverture , also Toussaint Bréda, Toussaint-Louverture was the leader of the Haitian Revolution. His military genius and political acumen led to the establishment of the independent black state of Haiti, transforming an entire society of slaves into a free,...
- Mother Mary E. Lange
- Reginald F. Lewis
- Makeda, Queen of Sheba
- Queen Anne NjingaNzinga of Ndongo and MatambaNzinga Mbande , also known as Ana de Sousa Nzinga Mbande, was a 17th century queen of the Ndongo and Matamba Kingdoms of the Mbundu people in southwestern Africa.-Early life:...
- Osborne Payne
- General Colin PowellColin PowellColin Luther Powell is an American statesman and a retired four-star general in the United States Army. He was the 65th United States Secretary of State, serving under President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2005. He was the first African American to serve in that position. During his military...
- Howard RollinsHoward RollinsHoward Ellsworth Rollins, Jr. was an American television, film, and stage actor. He is perhaps best known for his portrayal of Coalhouse Walker, Jr...
- Robert SamuelRobert SamuelRobert Samuel was an English priest of East Bergholt in Suffolk, England who was imprisoned, tortured and burnt to death as a judicial execution under the Marian persecutions, and is commemorated as one of the Ipswich Martyrs...
- Emmett TillEmmett TillEmmett Louis "Bobo" Till was an African-American boy who was murdered in Mississippi at the age of 14 after reportedly flirting with a white woman. Till was from Chicago, Illinois visiting his relatives in the Mississippi Delta region when he spoke to 21-year-old Carolyn Bryant, the married...
- Harriet TubmanHarriet TubmanHarriet Tubman Harriet Tubman Harriet Tubman (born Araminta Harriet Ross; (1820 – 1913) was an African-American abolitionist, humanitarian, and Union spy during the American Civil War. After escaping from slavery, into which she was born, she made thirteen missions to rescue more than 70 slaves...
- Nat TurnerNat TurnerNathaniel "Nat" Turner was an American slave who led a slave rebellion in Virginia on August 21, 1831 that resulted in 60 white deaths and at least 100 black deaths, the largest number of fatalities to occur in one uprising prior to the American Civil War in the southern United States. He gathered...
- Madam C.J. Walker
- Carter G. WoodsonCarter G. WoodsonCarter Godwin Woodson was an African-American historian, author, journalist and the founder of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History. Woodson was one of the first scholars to study African American history. A founder of Journal of Negro History , Dr...
Events featured in exhibits
- Ancestors' worst nightmare
- Bombing in Birmingham
- Boy on the Woodpile
- Goodman, Chaney, Schwerner
- I AM NOT AFRAID
- Scottsboro BoysScottsboro BoysThe Scottsboro Boys were nine black teenage boys accused of rape in Alabama in 1931. The landmark set of legal cases from this incident dealt with racism and the right to a fair trial...
- Youth of the chain gang
- Voting rights struggle