In Black America; America's First Black Wax Museum

You In Black America, reflections of the Black experience in American society. Although America's betrayed as a great melting pot of ethnicity, Black American culture has been the seldom-tasted season stock that has bound the ethnic stew together. The words, artifacts, memorabilia, pictures, and the accomplishments of Black figures and other Black artists, inventors, statesmen, and pioneers can be found in large numbers, generally only in Black museums. Recently, America's first and only Wax Museum dedicated to Black history,

Great Blacks and Wax opened in Baltimore, Maryland. I'm John Hanson, and this week our focus is on the Great Blacks and Wax Museum with Dr. Elmer P. Martin in Black America. Before we open up this Wax Museum, we visited a number of Wax Museums in the country, throughout the country. In fact, we went as far as Canada to see some Wax Museums there. Those Wax Museums that do have Black figures, most of the Black figures were not up to par according to our standards. For example, in some Wax Museums, they would have all the Black figures the same color. In some, they would euponize the features. There was one that had Harriet Tubman in it, and she looked like a fatty Elizabeth Attela with the European features. There was one Wax Museum we went to, and the eyes were yellowish, had yellowish material in the eyes,

and we asked them, and he only had the typical three figures, Booker T. Washington, George Washington, Carver, and nowadays Martin Luther King is a popular figure in most museums, but beyond those three, you don't see any Blacks. So we asked them, and we said, why do you have all the Blacks with the yellowish material in the eyes, with the yellowish material? And he said, well, he was told that all Black folks had this yellowish material in their eyes. So we are kind of revolutionizing, really, the whole industry as far as making Wax figures. And we tried to bring out certain kinds of details that these Wax museums previously have overlooked, such as skin tone, texture of hair, and that sort of a thing. Wax as an art form began in Africa, the old kingdom of Egypt, which was populated and ruled by Blacks

before they were driven out by the Arabs. The Benin Kingdom and Nigeria became particularly famous for its Wax work. Afro-Americans have made use of Wax also, slave use, beeswax to make dolls, and a number of arts and practical objects. In the 1890s, a Black New Orleanian known only as Vargas was the principal design of Wax figures. Today, the descendants of Vargas still make a living in Wax's items. Since Blacks invented Wax's work and have carried it down through the generations, it is appropriate and about time that America had its first Black Wax museum. Recently, I visit Baltimore, Maryland, where the first Great Blacks and Wax Museum opened. The museum was first conceived in September of 1982 as a traveling exhibition by Dr. Elmer and Joanne Martin. Elmer teaches at Morgan State University and Joanne teaches at Coppin State. Once you enter the storefront Wax Museum,

you get a sense that this is a culture with its roots in Africa and its relationship with Europe. You began to learn of stacemen and orchards and inventors and educators and freedom fighters. You also witnessed the perils of the abolitionists struggling to end the evil of slavery. You see craftsmanship and skilled in sculpture, painting, and wood carvings. You also become aware of the invaluable contributions Blacks have made to America and the world. Financing for the museum came solely from the Martin's own pockets. The 27 Wax figures on display range from crispus addicts to Nat Turner to Thurgood Marshall. The displays are arranged chronologically and by similar subject matter. Each mannequin is accompanied by an encapsulated history. The likenesses are uncanny. Each mannequin looks almost too much like the original person. The mannequins are nearly perfect down to the last detail, including the varying skin tones and hair types. The figures will be changed every two months.

In January of 1984, the late Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. will be on display, giving us, I have a dream speech. I spoke with Dr. L. M. P. Martin, co-founder of America's first Black Wax Museum. Well, we decided to open up the Wax Museum in September of last year. But the thought of popularizing black history had been with us for a number of years. I think one of the things that motivated us was the fact that the 60s and the black consciousness mood seemed to be dying out in the late 70s and in the 80s, particularly among young people and college age students. So the thought of creating a mechanism whereby black history would be popularized, taken out of the school systems and put into the homes and into the streets. That thought had been with us for a number of years.

Why here in Baltimore, Maryland? Well, primarily because we are here in Baltimore, Maryland. We hope that if this is a success, then we will have museums breath throughout the country. How long did it take once you got the idea to actually get a building, finding and finding the answers to open the museum? Well, we've been blessed, as I said before, the thought of doing a Wax Museum cure to us in September of 1982. And we opened up our doors on July 9th of this year. So it was not even a year from the conception of the idea to the operation of the idea. So we've been very blessed in that regard. As far as finances are concerned, most of the finances come out of our own personal savings and one or two loans. We don't have any grants, we don't have any city or public money, money.

And for the most part, we chose that way. We chose not to take that kind of route. We're going to have some controversial figures in here, at least controversial, in the eyes of some people. And we don't want to have anybody to determine them, who goes into this museum. Say for example, if we put an annular Davis in here, and somebody objected to the fact that our philosophy is communistic. Funding sources would probably put all kinds of pressure not to have a figure like that in here, or maybe even a Paul Robeson, who called a lot of hell in his own time. But we wanted to make sure that we control policy and what figures would go into our museum. When did Waxe become an art form? Well, Waxe has been working in Waxe for a number of years. You would know that if you looked at Waxe Museums in this country

because most of them are predominantly white Waxe Museums, that you would have one or two figures. But every since Old Kingdom in Egypt, thousands of years ago, two or three thousand years ago, Waxe had been working with Waxe. Some of the mummies were made out of Waxe. Some of the sculptures were made out of Waxe. And Black slaves here in this country used beeswax to make a number of art objects, as well as to make Waxe dolls. And that sort of thing. So Blacks have been in Waxe work for years. In the Old Kingdom of Minimum, which is now in Nigeria, Blacks there were known for their work in Waxe, the art work in Waxe. What do you find to shape the mannequins for you? Do you do some of work yourself or are there other sculptures? I'm not skilling in that regard. We have several sculptures around the city who do the sculpture and part of it. And that's the main part to get the likenesses.

And the first stage, of course, is done in clay. And then a mold is made. And then we have Waxe and mixed with vown for the product. But we have a team of people. Because you have people doing different things. For example, one person does the hair. And that's a tedious process. Because the figures are not wearing wigs. Each strand of hair is woven into the heads. And we have people put in the eyes. We have people to research the clothes. And to try to get the clothes matched with the historical background. And to make the clothes. So we have a team of talented black people doing the whole thing from beginning to end. And walking through the museum today, most of the figures are in settings of their time. Is that process thought out before the mannequins actually made what we're going to have this mannequin in this position and this setting and et cetera? Yeah. All the settings were planned, given a limited space that we have. And we try to start out with a revolutionary period.

For America, a revolutionary war period, where we have Christmas adults and philosophically and Benjamin Bannaker. The only thing that's out of sequence is that probably we should have started with Africa. But we have our own special African room later on in the museum. But we more or less follow historical sequence. Because then we see slavery. And then we see blacks in the early parts of the 19th century, Booker T. Washington W. B. DeBoys. And then we bring it on up. How do you decide who and who won't be on exhibit? Well, there are certain figures that you must have in any wax museum, black wax museum, if you're going to call yourself a black wax museum. At the moment, we're incomplete. We don't have key characters, which we are going to add at specific times. For example, we're going to add Martin Luther King on his birthday.

And that's because we're working on a talking wax figure of King, given as I have a dream speech. We're going to introduce Carter D. Wilson for February during black history month, since he's the founder of black history month. And Malcolm X on his birthday. But we make the decision primarily on who's going to be in here. And we have figures that are known and those that are unknown. For example, Henry Bach's Brown. He's not a poplar person in history. But nevertheless, as contributed, you know, with that thirst for freedom to ship yourself all away from Philadelphia, Richmond, to Philadelphia in a box. And that's a testimony to the wheel of blacks to be free. The lightings are uncanny. I mean, they're lifelike. The artists that does the makeup and hair have to be pretty good at their craft. What makes them so lifelike and so different, as you stated,

from the other museums, the other white museums that we have around the country? Well, before we open up this wax museum, we visited a number of wax museums in the country, throughout the country. In fact, we went as far as Canada to see some wax museums there. Those wax museums that do have black figures. Most of the black figures were not up to par, according to our standards. For example, in some wax museums, they would have all the black figures the same color. In some, they would ewerpenize the features. There was one that had Harriet Tubman in it. And she looked like a fatty Elizabeth Taylor with the ewerpene features. There was one wax museum we went to. And the eyes were yellowish, had yellowish material in the eyes. And we asked him, well, he only had the typical three figures. Booker T. Washington, George Washington, Carver.

And nowadays Martin Luther King is a popular figure in most museums. But beyond those three, you don't see any blacks. So we asked him, and we said, why do you have all the blacks with the yellowish material in the eyes? Redish, yellowish material. And he said, well, said he was told that all black folks had this yellowish material in their eyes. So we are kind of revolutionizing, really, the whole industry as far as making wax figures. And we tried to bring out certain kinds of details that these wax museums previously have overlooked, such as skin tone, texture of hair, and that sort of a thing. Have any of the museums that you've visited yet? Yes, we had a couple of them to come up. It's very interesting. There's a wax museum in Florida. And they had Alexander Dumas and Alexander Pushkin. Well, you know, Dumas was the novelist, fresh novelist that put out the counter-money crystal

and the three musketeers and considered to be the father of the modern novel. And Alexander Pushkin is considered to be the father of Russian literature. Well, they had these two figures totally white. And the man didn't know that they were black. You're being from Russia and being from France. And I asked him to darken them up just a little bit to bring out the Negro or Black African features. And when he found out that they were black, instead of making the corrections, he moved the figures. So we are beginning to educate people. And a few wax museums have come in to look at the quality of our work. What has been the response from the citizens here in Baltimore on the museum? Well, so far, the response has been great for those who have come to see us. Of course, we would like to have more people to come through the doors and see what we have to offer. We're sort of in what I call a catch, a 22 position.

We're here to raise the consciousness of blacks. But at the same time, black consciousness has to be raised from the beginning before they come in here. If you understand, there's almost like a vicious cycle. We're here to raise the consciousness of blacks. To bring them in, but before they come in, they have to have a little bit of their consciousness already raised. And some blacks are even threatened by our history. They were threatened by our own history, intimidated by our own history. But the response overall has been great. And people didn't really feel the sense of pride after having gone through the wax museum. And that makes us feel that we are serving our purpose. Has there been any interest from the school systems here in Baltimore? Do they come by classes, come by and check out the black art. Well, so far, we've had mainly day curious centers doing the summer. But the school system, we've talked with the school teachers.

We've talked with members of the school board. And we look to see a number of kids coming through here doing the school year. In fact, we're going to make some preparations for that. So we have space and room to accommodate children from the school system. That's going to be our bread and butter. So we are going to depend heavily upon the school systems this year. And we have hooked into with school officials. How long does it take to come up with a mannequin from start to finish? Yeah, it depends upon how long it takes the sculpture to sculpt the heat and clay first. Once the heat is sculptured and clay, then it doesn't take that long. It takes about three weeks to do a complete figure. And of course, if you have several sculptures working on several different heaths, then you can do several figures in a matter of two or three weeks.

Also, it depends upon how much higher the figures are going to need. It took us four days just to do the higher Frederick Douglass, because you had to do the beard and everything. But if you had a figure that didn't have any hair on his face, then it won't take as long as one with a Douglass. So it generally takes about three weeks. Is there any special preparation and preserving the wax figure once there and wax there will be in waxed? Well, yeah, they should be in wax for many, many years. They should outlive you and I. In the old days, they used to make figures out of beeswax primarily. But of course, modern day museums know that you have to keep beeswax at a certain temperature. And then, of course, at a one of the time, people freeze at the temperature. You can't put the heat up. But now there's people mixing a vound kind of material with the wax. And it gives it a hard surface.

And of course, we have the modern, we use the modern method and the modern chemicals. To know the figures, once they're made, if you don't put direct heat on them, they will last for many, many years. How often will the exhibits change? Well, what we're going to do, hopefully, in our, what we call our storefront wax museum. And we know we had to start from a storefront, churches, I've started from storefront and businesses, and so forth. What we do, we're going to add on as many scenes as we can. And since we have such a small number of figures, well, we have not just nothing in the country. That's because we're the first one. We have 34 figures, and we're going to add, we're in the process of making eight, eight more. For this little building, we're not going to go beyond the 42 figures. Hopefully, by then, our reputation will be such that we can go to any building, anywhere in Baltimore. And people will still follow us.

So this is, we really see as a, as a beginning. And we're not really going to change scenes up. We are going to improve up on scenes. But we're not going to change scenes. Once you start getting a hundred or more figures, then you can start jacking scenes and so forth. But for a small museum like this, we want to give everybody the opportunity to see each of the figures that we have. You mentioned earlier about the consciousness of about our history. I noticed back in one of the displays, displays about inventions that Blacks have come up with and also list of inventions and patents. Why is it important you being interested in history and other Black Americans being interested in history and knowing about that history? Well, it's extremely important. We're sort of following the tradition of people like Carter G. Woodson and Marcus Garvey, Debbie Beatty-Boas. All of those people who said that in order for people to achieve or to accomplish anything, they need a strong sense of pride and a strong knowledge of self and of history.

So we're following a tradition, just using a different medium, a different mechanism. And we think it's of the utmost important for young people to know the contributions that Black people are made to America and to the world. In the school system, this would do much to eliminate feelings of inferiority and low-cephic steam. All of us staying the sociologists are talking about as well as providing role models of success and achievement for young people. So this is our primary reason for engaging in this thing. Once you move into bigger quarters, do you plan on trying to open up museums in other parts of the country? This wax museum proves to be successful, and I'm talking about successful in terms of being able to keep it alive and natural. I've already been a success in the sense that, well, it wasn't easy to open up the doors, and secondly, the response has been great so far.

But if this proves to be successful, then you should see great blacks and wax museums are spread throughout the country, becoming the Texas with a wax museum. We hope that February will prove to be our best month, that's Black History Month. But nevertheless, we are here to let people know that Black History is a living process, and once a month, it's just not going to incorporate all of that history. Besides Dr. Martin Luther King, what other figures will be coming to the Great Black Wax Museum? Well, we have a key figures now, 34 key figures now, Frederick Douglass Harrier, Thomas Dernatou, Charles Drew, George Washington, and Carver. But we're in the process of making more of the modern-day leaders.

King, he's not here for a specific reason, that's because I said we're working on a talking king that's going to be delivering, I have a dream speech. But we're working now on Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey, Elijah Muhammad, Carter D. Woodson, and Adam B. Wales, who led the anti-Linching Crusade in the early parts of this century. We will have the first figure done of Marcus Garvey, probably in the world and of Malcolm X. And here we have some figures that are first black ever in Wax in this museum. You think the idea you catch on and the white museums will pick up on it? You think they might come up with more black wax figures? Probably so, you'll steal, I have a habit of stealing things from them. Once they see blacks coming to this thing and the popularity of it, then I'm sure they will add more than the typical three. George Washington, Carver, Booker T. Washington, and now Martin Luther King.

I'm sure that they will add on figures, but we don't see that as a threat to us. Dr. Elmer P. Martin, co-founder of the Great Blacks in Wax Museum in Baltimore, Maryland, America's first black wax museum. If you have a comment or would like to purchase a cassette copy of this program, write us the address is in Black America, Longhorn Radio Network, Austin, Texas, 78712. That address again is in Black America, Longhorn Radio Network, Austin, Texas, 78712. For in Black America's technical producer, David Lloyd, I'm John Hanson. Join us next week. You've been listening to in Black America, Reflections of the Black Experience in American Society. In Black America is produced and distributed by the Center for Telecommunication Services at UT Austin, and does not necessarily reflect the views of the University of Texas at Austin or the station.

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