A student stepped up to press the colorful dot on the floor and Madam C.J. Walker came to life, explaining how her Black hair care products led her to become the first American woman to be a self-made millionaire.
Across the room, Ketanji Brown Jackson and Shirley Chisholm spoke about how they became the first Black women to serve on the Supreme Court and in Congress, respectively.
Actors, athletes and activists also filled Harrison Elementary’s gym Friday as third grade students in costume portrayed prominent Black individuals as part of a living wax museum to commemorate Black History Month.
“It’s really important to me that they get to know the people that came before them,” Kyle Powers, the school’s assistant principal, said in an interview.
“A lot of the students don’t understand the timing of things,” he said. “So teaching them that these things weren’t that long ago, they really start to feel that, and then they feel more powerful. They want to share their stories. They want to become these people. It really just motivates them, which is awesome to see.”
(READ MORE: Hamilton County opens senior and community center in Harrison)
This is the school’s fourth year putting together the living wax museum. Each student is assigned a person, and then the third graders write their speech and put together an outfit based on their research. While the students are given some guidance on their speech’s introduction, it’s up to them to decide which parts of their person’s life are most important, Powers said.
Dressed as Martin Luther King Jr., Ashton Custer said he learned about how much King helped others and that he won two major awards: the Nobel Peace Prize and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
“I hope they like the speech,” Ashton said of his classmates. “I’ve been practicing for a long time, put a lot of effort into it.”
JerNyah Jackson posed as Ruby Bridges, a civil rights activist who integrated an all-white elementary school when she was 6 years old.
“She was the bravest kid to go because the other Black people didn’t want to send their kids over because they were scared,” she said.
JerNyah added her favorite part was performing and getting to dress up as Bridges because she either wants to be an actress or go to the moon.
When Powers asks students to name important figures in Black history at the start of the research project each year, they typically name people like King, Rosa Parks and LeBron James, he said. He hopes the project will help both the students working on it and those visiting the museum to learn about more of these individuals.
“They get to learn about their person, and then they share their expertise with all the students in the building,” Powers said. “Every student comes, and they just really get to learn about some Black excellence and some figures that really paved the way for what we’re doing today.”
Contact Shannon Coan at scoan@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6396.