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Article: Great Blacks in Wax Museum
- Article from:
- Winnipeg Free Press
- Article date:
- August 9, 2009
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright F.P. Canadian Newspapers Limited Partnership Aug 9, 2009. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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BALTIMORE -- The arrow on the lamppost pointed to the right and the sign said GREAT BLACKS IN WAX.
It was a grim and accurate description, a community embalmed. On both sides of Baltimore's Broadway, as I drove uptown from the sparkling, tourist-soaked Inner Harbor, were ranks of century-old row houses, more than half of them clapboarded, vandalized, and vacant. Once, they had been the palaces of honest, striving families, but now, stencilled on each doorway were these heartbreaking words:
NO TRESPASSING
PRIVATE PROPERTY
ASSISTANCE FOR TRAPPED ANIMALS CALL 311
Around one corner, a school had been abandoned, the lifted voices of its students long silenced, its ground floor windows plugged ...