Banneker Douglass Museum

Posters, pins and place mats are all on sale Saturday at the Banneker Douglass Museum Market Place at the museum, 84 Franklin St., Annapolis.About 10 vendors from the region will sell jewelry, books, accessories, clothing, and cards for the museum's Black History Month market. The event is a repeat of the Kwanzaa market that drew throngs of visitors last year, organizers say.The market will be open from noon to 3 p.m. Information: 410-974-2893.Fabulous Hubcaps to play at Maryland Hall sock hopThe Fabulous Hubcaps are on their way to Annapolis this weekend to rock the socks off 1950s boppers.

Last September things were looking up at the Banneker-Douglass Museum, home of one of the country's most extensive collections of African-American artifacts. After a year of bitter controversy, a new director was in place, new ventures were being planned.Nine months later, Rosalind D. Savage is gone -- fired 10 days ago by the state-appointed commission that runs the museum -- and her supporters are talking again about the demise of a museum named for two eminent black Marylanders: scientist Benjamin Banneker and writer-abolitionist Frederick Douglass.

Museum article was dismaying to black communityWe in Annapolis community and many African-Americans throughout Maryland were crushed to see inaccurate and misleading facts in the article concerning the African-American Museum to be built in Baltimore.We have always stated that we welcome a sister museum, however, not at the expense of the Banneker-Douglass Museum in Annapolis.For the record:Banneker-Douglass is a statewide museum with an extremely high tourist population in historic Annapolis.

Last September things were looking up at the Banneker-Douglass Museum, home of one of the country's most extensive collections of African-American artifacts. After a year of bitter controversy, a new director was in place, new ventures were being planned.Nine months later, Rosalind D. Savage is gone -- fired 10 days ago by the state-appointed commission that runs the museum -- and her supporters are talking again about the demise of a museum named for two eminent black Marylanders: scientist Benjamin Banneker and writer-abolitionist Frederick Douglass.

Visitors to Annapolis' Banneker-Douglass Museum last week may have been confused by a sign posted on the museum door. It announced that the institution would be closed through Nov. 12, and gave no explanation.The sign should have specified the museum is temporarily closed while staff members are putting up the next exhibit, said Carroll Hynson Jr., chairman of the state-appointed commission that oversees the museum on Franklin Street in the city's historic district.The exhibit -- "In His Words: The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass" -- will run from Saturday through March 11, said Hynson, who heads the Commission on African-American History and Culture.

Four months after the director of the Banneker-Douglass Museum was fired with less than a year on the job, the museum's program and events coordinator has resigned in frustration with bureaucratic bickering she says is hampering the institution."

Emerging from months of bitter controversy about its future and its staff, the Banneker-Douglass Museum in Annapolis' historic district is once again designing exhibits and moving ahead with an expansion planned for the year 2000."

At the urging of several supporters of the Banneker-Douglass Museum, the Annapolis city council unanimously approved a resolution last night urging Maryland's top officials to save the museum as a state-supported institution.Last night's action came two weeks after the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development fired museum director Ronald L. Sharps because of differences over management. The firing was seen by museum supporters as part of an effort to close one of the state's major repositories of black culture.

Supporters of the Banneker-Douglass Museum in Annapolis, fearful that the state is trying to shut down the facility, were furious yesterday about a written reprimand from a state official to museum program officer Kenneth L. Webster.The written warning from Wayne E. Clark, executive director of the Office of Museum Services, to Webster accused him of "bordering on insubordination" and "poor judgment" for refusing to meet with his direct supervisors about his concerns for the museum.But museum supporters say the warning was retaliation for Webster's support of the recently fired director, Ronald Sharps.

It started as a step toward reconciliation, but a meeting yesterday of Banneker-Douglass Museum supporters and members of the commission who oversee the state-supported institution ended in a shouting match.When Daphne Harrison, co-chairwoman of the Maryland Commission on African American History and Culture, tried to assure museum supporters that the state had no plans to close it, but refused to discuss the firing of museum director Ronald L. Sharps, the crowd erupted."You cannot separate the two," several museum supporters shouted.

Environmental education programs offered Annapolis Recreation & Parks is offering environmental educational programs at the newly renovated, city-owned Back Creek Nature Park at 1314 Edgewood Road. The urban ecology park offers recreation, education and a living classroom. Public programs will be offered that are geared for children ages 3 to 10 for $5 per class. Scheduled courses, 90 minutes long, include: * "Extreme Shoreline Strategies" at 3 p.m. today: Learn how to protect the shoreline.

Downstairs in the new space at the Banneker-Douglass Museum in Annapolis, Janice Hayes Williams, a 48-year-old local historian, said an exhibit on cultural artifacts made her feel oddly at home. "William Henry Hebron, that's my great-grandfather," Williams said, pointing to a name listed in the Annapolis Underground exhibit, which features artifacts of African-American family life dug up from the very block where the museum stands at 84 Franklin St. "He was a fish merchant, half-black and half-Jewish."

The Banneker-Douglass Museum in Annapolis is now closer to Church Circle, with its front door moved 10 paces to the left - bringing a visitor into a stark space where the old and new architecture of the museum meet. Inside the Franklin Street entrance, gleaming black floor tiles and a modern light oak staircase make a seamless match with the tall right wall from the exterior of the 1890s brick building. All this sets the stage for a maritime mural of the City Dock circa 1870, the post-emancipation period, right in the middle of the story the museum is there to tell.

The Banneker-Douglass Museum in Annapolis is now closer to Church Circle, with its front door moved 10 paces to the left - bringing a visitor into a stark space where the old and new architecture of the museum meet. Inside the Franklin Street entrance, gleaming black floor tiles and a modern light oak staircase make a seamless match with the tall right wall from the exterior of the 1890s brick building. All this sets the stage for a maritime mural of the City Dock circa 1870, the post-emancipation period, right in the middle of the story the museum is there to tell.

A long-awaited $5.5 million renovation and expansion of the Banneker-Douglass Museum in Annapolis suffered a setback last night when fire and an explosion, possibly caused by a propane tank, damaged the work site in the city's historic district. Alerted by an alarm company, firefighters responded to the building on Franklin Street near Church Circle about 9:30 p.m. and immediately noticed smoke coming from the work site adjacent to the museum, said Battalion Chief Michael Lonergan of the Annapolis Fire Department.

A long-awaited $5.5 million renovation and expansion of the Banneker-Douglass Museum in Annapolis suffered a setback last night when fire and an explosion, possibly caused by a propane tank, damaged the work site in the city's historic district. Alerted by an alarm company, firefighters responded to the building on Franklin Street near Church Circle about 9:30 p.m. and immediately noticed smoke coming from the work site adjacent to the museum, said Battalion Chief Michael Lonergan of the Annapolis Fire Department.

In the former sanctuary of Mount Moriah Church, state and local leaders and museum officials celebrated yesterday the long-awaited expansion of the state's first African-American history museum. The Banneker-Douglass Museum, which opened in the historic church on Franklin Street in Annapolis nearly 20 years ago, will grow to more than double its size when a $5.5 million addition is completed. Construction begins next week. In late December, supporters expressed concern that the expansion had been delayed and said they feared that the small museum would soon be eclipsed by the 82,000-square-foot Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History and Culture, set to open in Baltimore next year.

In the former sanctuary of Mount Moriah Church, state and local leaders and museum officials celebrated yesterday the long-awaited expansion of the state's first African-American history museum. The Banneker-Douglass Museum, which opened in the historic church on Franklin Street in Annapolis nearly 20 years ago, will grow to more than double its size when a $5.5 million addition is completed. Construction begins next week. In late December, supporters expressed concern that the expansion had been delayed and said they feared that the small museum would soon be eclipsed by the 82,000-square-foot Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History and Culture, set to open in Baltimore next year.

Plans to expand the Banneker-Douglass Museum in Annapolis have supporters split over whether it is threatened by construction in Baltimore of the East Coast's largest African-American history museum. Errol E. Brown Sr., president of the Friends of the Banneker-Douglass Museum, is skeptical that the $6 million, 10,000-square-foot expansion will ever take place in Annapolis, saying it was originally scheduled to begin in 2001 and will be overshadowed when the Baltimore museum is completed.

Calendar Photo exhibit: Moneta Sleet Jr.'s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1968 photograph of Coretta Scott King at the funeral of her husband, Martin Luther King Jr., and Gordon Parks' 1942 shot of cleaning woman Ella Watson in Washington in front of the American flag are part of Focus on Freedom: A Celebration of African-American Photographers and the Photography of the Civil Rights Era, an exhibition of photographs to be displayed tomorrow through Feb. 28...