Black in Wax and a Trip to Dublin

 Baltimore, MD

Selfie in front of the Visit Maryland Sign at Guinness

National Great Blacks in Wax Museum

This morning we drove to The National Great Blacks in Wax Museum.  This is homespun museum and is undergoing renovations at the moment but it was still open.  There are 150 wax figures starting off depicting the ugly beginning of a enslaved people's life from boat to auction, goes through The Civil War, Civil Rights, a whole area dedicated to talking about lynching, and then a celebration of Black History by highlighting important prominent and not so prominent figures up to Obama becoming president.  The first half of the museum isn't easy to get through but it is an important part of history that we can't whitewash away.

The experience has you entering a slave ship and going into the hull of the ship to see what went on.

There were many images like this.  I didn't take a lot of photos but I did learn a lot about the atrocities that occurred.  Some which never really crossed my mind.

After a long journey on the slave ship, the enslaved people that survived were often weak and were force fed to fatten them up so they would look stronger for the auction.

There were many methods to break an enslaved person's spirit once they were here.  This mask gave the person the option of complying or starving.

This contraption made the person stand up straight and limited movement.  Spikes in the collar caused wounds if the person wearing it wasn't careful and bells called attention and were used to keep other people in line.

Once the enslaved people were sold they were often branded like cattle.  They were pretty much treated like cattle or worse from the time they got on the ship to the time they ended up with the slave owners.

Soon the museum took a turn and started to talk about more positive things like The underground railroad.  This is an image of people helping enslaved people get to hiding places and then travel north to areas where they could be free.

This scene depicted The Dread Scott case.  In 1856, Dred Scott (1795-1858) challenged the institution of slavery by taking his case to the U.S. Supreme Court. He had been a slave in the South and had gained freedom in the North. Upon returning to the South his slave status was reinstated. He claimed that having once been free he was forever free. However, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, of Maryland, delivering the opinion of the Court, concluded, "blacks had no rights which a white man was bound to respect", and Dred Scott was not entitled to sue in the white man's courts.

The museum briefly covered The Civil War

The lynching section was separated from the rest of the museum and had warnings about its content.  It was a tough area to walk through.  There were fewer wax figures and far more actual photos.  There were even new clippings of lynching and lynching like events into the 1990s.  The Washington Post has an article about how lynchings haven't stopped even in the 2000s.

The museum ended with a celebration of the accomplishments and contributions.

Dr. Charles Drew, helped develop Blood Banks.

Black poets and writers like Langston Hughs

Black athletes that helped break barriers

Malcom X

Walter White used his white looking features to help advance the NAACP.  He posed as a white journalist and traveled through the South to collect information on discrimination, segregation, and most important lynching, without anyone suspecting that he was an African American or member of the NAACP. 

And Martin Luther King Jr.

This FUBU (For US By Us) clothing display shows me just how old this collection of wax figures is.  It's been a while since FUBU was in the popular culture.

It was a hard museum to visit but it's good to continue to learn about our unpleasant history so we don't repeat it. We all need to continue to make sure we aren't the ones that are back sliding.  There are plenty of people in the country that want to drag us back.

Fells Point

Since we had the car out, we decided to go to Fells Point and walk around a bit.  We still had about an hour and a half until our last event of the day started.  Fells Point was a shipbuilding port but now it is a bustling area for food, drink, and shopping.  When we were watching Homicide: Life on the Street they would go to Fells Point quite a bit.  Now it is totally different.

A book I saw at Goodwill.  Star Wars, Be More like BMore.  Basically it says Baltimore Vader.

Fells Point seems like a cool place.  It is a bit far to go there to bar crawl but we might go on a Saturday for the Saturday Market.

A Taste of Dublin

Baltimore is home to one of the Guinness Breweries.  They brew Baltimore beer there but also have beer from Dublin.  It's a great facility with good beer and good food.  The space is giant and it was hopping for Octoberfest.

We ended up getting there for opening

The Guinness Harp is just the Ireland Harp flipped or the Ireland Harp is The Guinness Harp flipped.

The Pretzel was great!

The pre tour beer was great too

I ended up finding my Baltimore T-Shirt

I thought it said Gameroom 

It's their 4th anniversary 

All set up for the Octoberfest Party Animals

I knew I liked Butts

Hello! Hello!

We had reservations for the 4:30 Brewery Tour

We learned all of the normal things.  The 2 new things we did was 1) we got to taste malted and roasted barley, and 2) we learned that many breweries get 30 year contracts with hops farmers and the Baltimore Guinness needs more contracts that aren't available so they might acquire a smaller brewery just to get their hops contracts.

We also learned that they are owned by Diageo Spirits and age Captain Morgan Rum on site and also have a pre-civil war graveyard on their property.

That was it for today.  It was a really fun day and the weather was great!  If you missed yesterday's post you can find it here.