Wax Museum Brings Ghastly Slavery Issues to Life for Uninitiated

BALTIMORE —  The girls stood silent as they stared at a bloody picture of a black man whose hands were chopped off by a former slave owner during Reconstruction.

They muttered to themselves, trying to understand how so harsh an act could have been carried out. After several minutes, 8-year-old Janae Thompson turned to her friend April Walker to offer a conclusion:

“They’re not supposed to do that to people, whether they’re black or white.”

It’s exactly the message Joanne Martin wanted to convey when she and her late husband, Elmer, opened the Great Blacks in Wax Museum in 1983. Only later would she learn that teenagers, black and white, weren’t even aware that blacks were once lynched for simply walking on the sidewalk with a white.

“This museum is designed to give them some kind of context for their life today and what the struggles of the past have to do with that,” she said. “The museum adds a visual impact to history. If you put a wax figure across the room, people will gravitate toward it.”

More than 100 life-size, authentically dressed wax statues are on display. Famous blacks such as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Frederick Douglass and Marcus Garvey. There are wax figures of such ancient notables as Hannibal, the pharaoh Akhenaten and the priest-physician Imhotep of Egypt--people who represented the struggle and power of blacks.

King’s statue is dressed in a dark suit and tie. A three-figure display featuring Jackie Robinson, Joe Louis and Jesse Owens has Robinson in a Brooklyn Dodgers uniform, Louis in boxing trunks and Owens in a blue track suit with gold medals hanging around his neck.

Secretary of State Colin Powell and Rosa Parks, who have visited the museum, are immortalized in wax.

A Group Effort

A network of contractors sculpt, color and make hair for the figures. Some have wax heads and hands attached to mannequin bodies; others are complete wax statues.

In some cases, the clothing was donated. Former New York Rep. Shirley Chisholm, the first black congresswoman, contributed clothing for a costume and the Army gave a uniform for the Powell statue.

Each figure takes about five months to construct, a process Martin said is worth the time because in some cases, the figure is modeled after someone still living. The cost of each statue ranges from $9,000 to $25,000.

A large replica of a nameless slave ship greets patrons entering the building, and children are encouraged to walk around the vessel and view pictures of slaves being brought to America in colonial times. One painting shows a slave wrapped in chains hanging off the side of a ship, his hand bitten off by sharks.

“We want them to look at the contradiction of a slave ship named Friendship or Holy Mary or John the Baptist,” Martin said. “These were death ships where cruelty and heinous crimes took place. There was that idea that it negated all that through the names [of the ships].”

Plumbing the Depths

The replicas on the bottom floor, which is dedicated to lynchings, are disturbing.

On display in a clear plastic box is a mannequin of a pregnant black woman hanging by a rope wrapped around the neck. The abdomen is cut open.

Across the room is a wall with pictures of white men standing next to dead black men hanging from trees. Below them are jars containing replicas of body parts cut from blacks along with an explanation that the hands, arms, legs and genitals were “prizes” for racists who carried out such atrocities.

The section also has a small hallway with graffiti spray painted over a brick wall and gang members with guns.

A list of 5,000 blacks lynched in the United States between the 1880s and 1930s is posted above the room’s entrance. It is based on the book “100 Years of Lynching” by Ralph Ginzburg, as well as three years of research by Martin’s husband in the records of the NAACP, Tuskegee University and Xavier University of Louisiana.

Martin said it is difficult to pinpoint the number of lynching victims.

“So much of it was secret,” she said. “People just disappeared or were missing under unknown circumstances.”

That exhibit was unveiled, she said, after teenagers told her they didn’t know blacks were once victims of lynchings.

“How are you going to convince those kids that a struggle took place?” she asked. “Walking on a sidewalk with a white person could have gotten you killed. They [youths] should be thankful for enjoying the freedoms that they enjoy today.”

With such graphic and disturbing images, Martin said teachers and parents must decide whether to allow young children into the room.

The Martins began touring schools, churches, shopping malls and other places in 1980, using four wax statues bought with money they had saved to buy a house. Their goal was to teach people about black history.

Elmer Martin was a faculty member in the department of social work and mental health at Morgan State University. His wife once ran the tutoring program at Coppin State University, but resigned eight years ago to work full time at the museum.

By 1983, the couple had opened a small museum with 21 wax figures.

The museum gained popularity and eventually the Martins won federal, state and local grants to help them expand. Running primarily on donations, fund-raisers and admission fees, the museum is now in a 30,000-square-foot complex that used to be a firehouse, a Victorian mansion and a duplex.

Martin works closely with the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People and other groups.

“We, as adults, have to put more emphasis on trying to get our young people to the museum,” said G.I. Johnson, president of the Baltimore branch of the NAACP. “There are things that they will witness that will help our children understand our history.”

Elmer Martin died last year while he and his wife were in Egypt for a research project. His spirit, however, lives on with the museum.

“My husband said we had to stop and ask, ‘What happened?’ and that slogans don’t do it--they can only go so far,” Joanne Martin said. “You have to build institutions, set up to preserve history. Otherwise, every generation would have to start over from scratch.”