Bear Me Into Freedom: Frederick Douglass and the Struggle for America’s Promise

Showings: Saturday, June 13th at 10:30am and 1:30pm
Location: Talbot Historical Society, in the Neall House at
29 S. Washington St., Easton, MD 21601
Tickets and Reservations: $10 per person. Contact THS @ kaylaw@talbothistory.org to make a reservation.

Bear Me Into Freedom is a tribute to Talbot County’s native son, Frederick Douglass, made more poignant during America’s Semiquincentennial. Douglass dedicated his life to promoting the ideals of the Declaration of Independence—that all men are created equal and have the inalienable rights of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. His fiery oratory and compelling prose advanced American towards the fulfillment of its founding ideals.
Bear Me Into Freedom is a 60-minute immersive experience, a video installation portraying the odyssey of Frederick Douglass from his birth and enslavement in the Eastern Shore’s Talbot County to his life’s work championing abolition, emancipation, and equal rights, and his triumphal return to the county as an elder statesman having become one of the most consequential figures of the 19th century. It tells his story using his words. The imagery is the actual places those words describe. The soundscape is the county’s wildlife. The images open across the flat horizons of Maryland’s Eastern Shore, where water and land trade places, the sky carries more weight than the earth beneath it. It was there, in bondage, that Douglass first learned the meaning of freedom, and from that ground that his lifelong call for justice would rise. His words, travel with us, joined by the wind, water, and living sounds of Talbot County itself. The installation’s canvas is wider than a standard movie screen, three times wider than a standard TV, to evoke the unique character of the Eastern Shore. Three separate but synchronized computers power the imagery, drawing viewers into the abolitionist’s world and surrounding them with the voice of Frederick Douglass.
Come, join the journey.

If you have any questions, wish to sign-up, please contact the Talbot Historical Society at
410-822-0773 or email kaylaw@talbothistory.org