By Megan Sayles
AFRO Staff Writer
msayles@afro.com
The National Great Blacks in Wax Museum will hold its annual “Voices of History” Street Fair on June 28, celebrating Black history, community resilience and the collective healing that emerges from arts and culture.
The festival will take place on the block outside of the East Baltimore museum on East North Avenue. It will feature musical performances, children’s activities, local arts and food vendors and health and wellness resource booths.
“It’s a celebration of the museum and history that it has generated and preserved. It’s a celebration of the Oliver community, where the museum is housed. And, it’s a celebration of East Baltimore— where I’m from,” said David Fakunle, director of the Transforming Equity through Arts, Culture and Health (TEACH) department at the museum. “It’s part of a greater effort to show that the museum is a lot more than just wax figures. It’s a repository of not just history, but arts and culture. Part of culture includes celebration and joy.”
The “Voices of History” Street Fair was first held in 2015. It was originally created to support the local literacy program, but it’s since evolved to coincide with Juneteenth and the anniversary of the museum’s opening.
The festival is a part of the museum’s Existential Determinants of Health Initiative, which leverages artistic and cultural practices to help the Baltimore community face and overcome trauma.
“Having a space for celebration and joy is good for your mental health and social-emotional health. If we look at it from an existential standpoint, joy is usually a result of being acknowledged, appreciated, respected, understood and loved,” said Fakunle. “That’s what we all want.”
This year, the festival will shine a special spotlight on Baltimore youth. There will be youth vendors selling their products and wares and performances by young people, including those from the Keur Khaleyi African Dance and Cultural Institute and Harford Heights Elementary School.
“We expect to have more children on stage than anybody else,” said Deborah Fakunle, a supporter of the museum and sponsor for the street fair. “Our children deserve an opportunity for us to applaud them. Uplifting the children is our goal.”
The National Great Blacks in Wax Museum has been a pillar in the Oliver community since 1988 when Elmer and Joanne Martin opened the 10,000-square-foot facility on East North Avenue. The museum houses nearly 150 life-size wax figures of notable African-Americans, like Frederick Douglass, Rosa Parks, Barack Obama and Henrietta Lacks. It also features a lynching exhibit and a slave ship replica.
Joanne Martin explained that central to the museum’s mission is telling the uncompromising truth about Black history. Her and her late husband refused to sanitize or soften the realities of slavery, racism and resistance.
“We’re a museum that has a slave ship in one basement and a lynching exhibit in another. We’re not trying to pretty up lynching, and we’re not saying the slave ship experience was a Tom Joyner cruise,” said Martin. “We tell it like it is.”
In recent years, the National Great Blacks in Wax Museum has collected several investments, including a $2-million congressional grant in 2023, as it prepares for a major redevelopment. The museum will expand from 1601 E. North Ave. to 1611 E. North Ave.
It’s the youth that has kept Martin focused on boosting the presence of the museum.
“Every child in this nation needs to know this history,” said Martin. “It’s our history— whatever your race, color, creed or any of that.”
