Baltimore’s National Great Blacks in Wax Museum

The National Great Blacks in Wax Museum was once just a dream.  In 1980, Joanne Martin and her husband Doctor Elmer Martin had saved enough money to put a down payment on a house.  Instead, they used the money to buy four sculptural figures set in wax.  For a time, they would transport these figures around, to schools and and various businesses in Baltimore.  Restaurant owners allowed them to exhibit as well as various festivals and public functions.

At that time, carting around the pieces, trying to protect them from damage, setting up and delivering their presentations, they were not aware of the fact that soon, they would be running the largest wax museum in the country that focused on the historical and cultural significance of African-Americans in the country.  By 1983, the married couple had secured a location in downtown Baltimore.  At that time their wax figure population totaled twenty-one figures.  Many people wished them well and they had the support of many friends and other people throughout the community.

Then, just five short years later, the grand opening was celebrated for a facility that measured in at ten thousand square feet.  This was not something that couple had envisioned nor imagined, but they have said that they always knew that they were guided by something outside of the themselves, the universe or a higher power, they do not know.  This venture was just the culmination of the natural course their life set out on when they first purchased those four statues many years ago.

They had a dream, just as Martin Luther King Junior had a dream.  And their dream fulfilled has inspired more people to do so as well, to not only have a dream but to follow that dream, no matter what may happen that may stand in one’s way.  Now the museum serves to educate through not only the exhibits but the on-going seminars on history, and the preservation of that history.  Little known historical facts are revealed, young people are motivated, race relations are improved just by simply walking through the doors.  This is not only an important venue in Baltimore, but an important one for the entire country.

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