Great Blacks

The deputy director of the Great Blacks in Wax Museum, where a 20-year-old man was fatally stabbed during a fight at a party Friday night, said he was cutting ties with a local promoter who had described the parties to museum officials as Christian fundraisers. Fliers for the parties, posted on a Web page for Big Les Productions, describe them as events for young adults and "mature" high school students. Many of the posters show young men flashing what appear to be gang signs or raising their middle fingers, and promise a "sexy ladies dance contest."

Where the passengers on the tour bus rolling west on North Avenue saw blocks of crumbling and abandoned buildings and overgrown lots, Lou Fields envisioned another Pratt Street in the making. Fields, who heads a nonprofit heritage tourism group, is leading an effort to revitalize what he views as one of the city's most overlooked thoroughfares. Progress is possible, he says, even in tough economic times. "Attention, awareness and appreciation — if you don't have those things going on, nothing's going to happen," said Fields, who views his role as that of "visionary crusader.

The Engineers Club was packed with people, including three replicas thereof. The 500 real folks circulated through sitting rooms of the historic building catching up with old friends and snagging a bite from the buffet. In the ballroom, the three nonhuman guests of honor awaited their introductions in an unveiling ceremony presenting the newest additions to the Great Blacks in Wax Museum's collection. Two of the figures would also be greeting their flesh-and-blood counterparts -- Baltimore entrepreneur-philanthropists Osborne Payne and Harlow Fullwood Jr. Both were at the party, but they were not allowed to see their wax facsimiles until the official unveiling.

Retired basketball star Chris Webber will help the National Great Blacks in Wax Museum raise funds for a $75 million replacement facility scheduled to open on Baltimore's North Avenue corridor in 2015. The museum announced that Webber, a five-time National Basketball Association All-Star who played from 1993 to 2008, will help launch an initiative next week to raise $4 million for the sports wing of a $7 million gallery of sports, recreation and athletics that will be part of the new museum.

TROY BRAILEY, hitching his way from South Carolina to Baltimore in the 1930s, probably had no idea he'd end up in wax. Brailey, through the kindness of strangers willing to pick up a black man headed north, found his way to Baltimore and worked as a shoeshine boy, presser and waiter before moving on to greater things. Those "greater things" are the reason the Great Blacks in Wax Museum unveiled last month its wax figure of Brailey, the legislator and civil rights activist who died in 1994.

Elmer and Joanne Martin began their mission to keep black history alive by carting around four wax figures in their car. Thirteen years later, 117 figures line two floors of their Great Blacks in Wax Museum in a converted East Baltimore firehouse.While their collection of wax figures has grown, one thing hasn't changed."We live right on the financial edge," Mrs. Martin laments. "An institution can't survive on that level. We can't live in the survival mode and be around 10 years from now."

When a visitor descends into the depths of the Great Blacks in Wax Museum to take a look at its exhibit on lynching, the first sound often is silence.Then follow words like: "Oh, my God."Here is the lynching of Hayes and Mary Turner, re-created with life-size figures and oversized horror. Billie Holiday sings "Strange Fruit," a song about lynching, softly in the background.On a sweltering August day, in an East Baltimore neighborhood better known for decrepitude and drug-selling than tourism, a sea of children in the matching T-shirts of summer camp come from as far as New Jersey and New York to see searing images like these at Great Blacks in Wax.Now, with a large new Maryland African-American History museum planned for the heart of Baltimore's tourist district, the founders of the first black wax museum in the country are wondering just what their future will hold.

The 20-year-old who was fatally stabbed Friday night in East Baltimore was attacked during a fight at a party at the Great Blacks in Wax Museum, records show. Police said the museum, which is in the 1600 block of E. North Ave. and features more than 100 life-size wax figures of prominent black leaders, had been rented out for a "large party" held by a group called the Baltimore Christian Warriors, according to court records and museum staff. A number of fights erupted, and Joshua Hargrove was stabbed as a group of men were escorted out of the facility just before midnight, records show.

A major expansion of a museum that honors African-American history and, in part, celebrates tearing down the walls of segregation began yesterday when the first crumbly wall came down to make way for construction. Sitting in the seat of a piece of heavy construction equipment, Mayor Martin O'Malley operated a giant metal arm that took a bite out of the first of 48 East Baltimore buildings that are being torn down to make way for the expansion of the Great Blacks in Wax Museum. The museum attracts a quarter-million visitors a year with its wax figures of great leaders, inventors and religious figures, as well as scenes from the slavery and segregation eras.

The Rev. Al Sharpton dropped by Baltimore on Monday to seek support for a fledgling plan to create a new arts district in the city to honor African-American cultural achievements. The proposal, by a group calling itself the African-American Arts Cultural & Entertainment Consortium, is still in the preliminary stages. But Sharpton said he supports the development of such a district because it would bolster the self-image of local youths. "This is not just an investment in the business community, it's an investment in the social order," Sharpton told an enthusiastic crowd of about 200 during an early evening rally inside the War Memorial auditorium.

WASHINGTON - A judge dismissed a lawsuit Monday by members of the nation's oldest black sorority, who sought to remove their president over alleged financial misdeeds. D.C. Superior Court Judge Natalia M. Combs Greene dismissed the lawsuit, filed by eight sorority sisters in June, against Alpha Kappa Alpha. The sisters had wanted to remove the Chicago-based group's leader, Barbara McKinzie, because they claimed she had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in AKA money on herself, some of it to pay for a wax statue of herself at the Great Blacks in Wax Museum in Baltimore.

A District Court hearing in the Baltimore murder trial of Jonathan Miller, who is accused of participating in a stabbing at the Great Blacks in Wax Museum last month, was postponed Tuesday until Jan. 26. Miller has yet to be indicted by the Baltimore Circuit Court, potentially signaling trouble ahead. The higher court typically takes on such cases. The state's attorney's office declined to comment, and defense attorney Jack Rubin would only say that his client is innocent.

The deputy director of the Great Blacks in Wax Museum, where a 20-year-old man was fatally stabbed during a fight at a party Friday night, said he was cutting ties with a local promoter who had described the parties to museum officials as Christian fundraisers. Fliers for the parties, posted on a Web page for Big Les Productions, describe them as events for young adults and "mature" high school students. Many of the posters show young men flashing what appear to be gang signs or raising their middle fingers, and promise a "sexy ladies dance contest."

The 20-year-old who was fatally stabbed Friday night in East Baltimore was attacked during a fight at a party at the Great Blacks in Wax Museum, records show. Police said the museum, which is in the 1600 block of E. North Ave. and features more than 100 life-size wax figures of prominent black leaders, had been rented out for a "large party" held by a group called the Baltimore Christian Warriors, according to court records and museum staff. A number of fights erupted, and Joshua Hargrove was stabbed as a group of men were escorted out of the facility just before midnight, records show.

The 20-year-old who was fatally stabbed Friday night in East Baltimore was attacked during a fight at a party at the Great Blacks in Wax Museum, records show. Police said the museum, which is in the 1600 block of E. North Ave. and features more than 100 life-size wax figures of prominent black leaders, had been rented out for a "large party" held by a group called the Baltimore Christian Warriors, according to court records and museum staff. A number of fights erupted, and Joshua Hargrove was stabbed as a group of men were escorted out of the facility just before midnight, records show.

Grandparents as Parents set to meet Sept. 10 Grandparents As Parents, a support group for grandparents raising their grandchildren, will meet from 6:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. Sept. 10 at the Bain Center, 5470 Ruth Keeton Way, Columbia. The discussion topic is "Helping Your Child Succeed in School." Free child care is provided; reservations are required. The group offers information on services and financial assistance and an opportunity to meet other grandparents raising children. Information: 410-313-1940.