At the end of June, the National Great Blacks in Wax Museum’s Annual “Voices of History” Street Fair returns for the eighth year, promising a vibrant celebration of community arts, culture, and health in Baltimore.
Taking place on June 28 from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., at 1601-1659 East North Avenue in Baltimore City, the “Voices of History” Street Fair is a free community event open to all. There will be local crafts vendors, along with art vendors and food.
Visitors can enjoy live musical entertainment featuring local talent, and a children’s area will have fun activities and games for kids. Many booths will feature health, wellness, and community resources for educational and informational purposes.
The National Great Blacks in Wax Museum will also be open for walk-in visitors and scheduled group tours throughout the day. There is a new wax figure of Henrietta Lacks, honoring her legacy in advancing medical science.
Lacks was a Black woman in Baltimore with cervical cancer, treated at Johns Hopkins Hospital in the 1950s. She died in 1951, but doctors gave her cells to a cancer researcher without her knowledge or consent, and those cells (called HeLa cells) were the basis of many advancements in modern medicine. In October 2024, Johns Hopkins University and Johns Hopkins Medicine broke ground on the future site of a 34,000-square-foot building to bear her name.
There is another temporary exhibit by artist Stephen Hayes called “Cash Crop,” confronting the realities of the transatlantic slave trade, through sculpture and storytelling.
Both the Lacks sculpture and the “Cash Crop” exhibits align with the museum’s mission and the Street Fair’s goal of celebrating Black history, community resilience, and the power of collective healing through arts and culture.
The Street Fair was originally launched in 2015 to support the Growing Griots Literacy Learning Program. It has grown to include commemorations of Juneteenth and the museum’s anniversary.
This year’s event also continues to be part of the museum’s participation in Existential Determinants of Health (E.D.O.H.) Initiative, an organization providing forums for creative expressions as a means of promoting healing from trauma.
