Fort Pierce hosting nation's only traveling wax museum exhibit dedicated to Black history

FORT PIERCE — In 1980 Joanne Martin and her husband Elmer Martin, both university professors in Maryland, set an ambitious goal outside their academic arena: "putting a face on a largely faceless history."

They did that by launching the nation's only traveling wax exhibit of historic Black figures. The exhibit will make its first stop in Lincoln Park in recognition of Black History Month. It also will be showcased in Panama City and possibly Port St. Joe, Martin said.

The traveling exhibit, "The political race: A wax figure exhibition and history of African Americans in politics," will run Feb.10-12 at Means Court Elementary School, once the only school in St. Lucie County for Black students.

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Lincoln Park Main Street, a nonprofit founded in 2006 dedicated to revitalizing Avenue D, is using part of a $10,000 grant from the Florida Department of State Division of Cultural Affairs to help bring the traveling wax exhibit here, according to Pamela Carithers, executive director of Lincoln Park Main Street.

Wax figures of Dorothy Height, Thurgood Marshall, Ida B. Wells, Kweisi Mfume, Julian Bond and Mary McLeod Bethune will be showcased in the exhibit.

"All of these people have a great deal of involvement with the civil rights movement, Carithers said. "The younger generation might not be as familiar with the movement, but they are byproducts of the civil rights movement and they need to understand the shoulders of which they are standing on and the the battles in which have been fought to enjoy the freedoms they experience to this day."

For Patricia Mullins, a member of the Lincoln Park Main Street steering committee, the exhibit highlights how Black history is American history.

"Time is out for calling it just 'Black history,'" Mullins said. "Every single movement that these individuals participated in and every sacrifice they made was on behalf of American history."

The wax figures will travel to Florida from the National Great Blacks in Wax Museum in Baltimore, which the Martins opened in 1983 and now has more than 150 life-sized Black wax figures including Harriet Tubman, Colin Powell and Zora Neale Hurston.

Here's the legacies of the six prominent Black leaders whose figures will appear here:

Dorothy Height (1912-2010)

Height became a leader of the United Christian Youth Movement of North America in 1933, marking the start of her steadfast advocacy to prevent lynching, desegregate the armed forces and reform the criminal-justice system.

The Virginia native also co-organized the March on Washington. She was president of the National Council of Negro Women for four decades and worked for many years at the Young Women's Christian Association — a nonprofit dedicated to eliminating racism, empowering women and promoting peace, justice, freedom and dignity for all, according to its mission statement.

Thurgood Marshall (1908-1993)

Marshall is well-known as the NAACP attorney who argued that school segregation was a violation of individual rights under the 14th Amendment in the Brown v. Board of Education U.S. Supreme Court case. The Supreme Court in 1954 agreed with him, delivering a landmark ruling that dismantled the "separate but equal doctrine" in public education.

He later became the first Black Supreme Court Justice in 1967 when President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed him.

Ida B. Wells (1862-1931)

Born into slavery in 1862, Wells would go on to become an investigative journalist, educator and early leader in the civil rights and women's suffrage movements.

The Pulitzer Prize winner spearheaded an anti-lynching campaign in 1892. She also was co-founders of the National Association of Colored Women’s Club and the NAACP.

Kweisi Mfume (born 1948)

Mfume, 73, is a U.S. representative for Maryland's 7th congressional district, first serving from 1987-1996, and again since 2020. The former Baltimore city councilman left his congressional seat in 1996 to become president and CEO of the NAACP. He resigned from that role in 2004.

During the Obama administration he was appointed by the secretary of health and human services to the Council of the National Institute on Minority Health Disparities at the National Institutes of Health.

Julian Bond (1940-2015)

Bond served in the Georgia House of Representatives from 1967-1975, where he organized the legislature's Black Caucus. He served in the Georgia Senate from 1975-1987.

The native Tennessean was a civil rights activist who, in 1971, became the first president of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a legal advocacy nonprofit specializing in civil rights and public-interest litigation.

From 1988-2010 he was chairman of the NAACP.

Mary McLeod Bethune (1875-1955)

The daughter of former slaves, Bethune started a school for girls in Daytona Beach in 1904, which would later become Bethune-Cookman University, one of 101 Historically Black Colleges and Universities in the nation.

She became the only Black woman to help the U.S. delegation that created the United Nations charter. She also created the National Council of Negro Women, directed the Office of Minority Affairs in the National Youth Administration and was a general in the Women's Army for the National Defense.

She was an adviser to four U.S. presidents, including Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Olivia McKelvey is TCPalm's watchdog reporter for St. Lucie County. You can reach her at olivia.mckelvey@tcpalm.com, 772-521-4380 and on Twitter @olivia_mckelvey.

If you go

What: "The political race: A wax figure exhibition and history of African Americans in politics"

When: 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Feb. 10-11; 9 a.m. to noon Feb. 12

Where: Means Court Elementary School, 532 N. 13th St., Fort Pierce

Admission: Free

This article originally appeared on Treasure Coast Newspapers: Traveling wax exhibit of Black history features Ida B. Wells, Thurgood Marshall