Freedom. It’s so close, isn’t it? I can feel it.
We shall have it.
Those 14 words are portrayed in a live animation documentary about the family of Daniel and Mary Bell, enslaved in Prince George’s County, Maryland, and Washington, D.C., in the 19th century.
The nearly 90-minute film, “The Bell Affair,” will premiere Thursday at the Publick Playhouse in Cheverly, Maryland.
Screenings will be shown nationwide throughout the year including virtually in the fall through the Prince George’s County Memorial Library System.
“What our project does is it expands the dialogue … and gives us other histories to talk about,” director Kwakiutl Dreher said hours before the Thursday screening. “We’re dealing with details. We’re showing how enslaved people talked to each other, lived with each other.”
The Bells’ family history comes from one of several stories featured in a book written by William G. Thomas III, “A Question of Freedom: The Families Who Challenged Slavery from the Nation’s Founding to the Civil War.”
Various Prince George’s agencies and groups are using the book as part of a multi-year project to produce programs, host virtual and in-person discussions and other events on families who resided in the county and fought for freedom through Maryland and federal courts starting in the late 1700s.
Joe’s Movement Emporium, a cultural arts center in Mount Rainier, plans to showcase a play based on the book through a “Freedom Stories” project led by award-winning playwright Psalmayene 24, whose formal name is Gregory Morrison.
As for the Bell family film, April Green said it’s “overwhelming” to see her family’s history showcased for the nation to see. Green is a descendant of Daniel Bell (1802-1877).
Green said Bell organized the largest attempted slave escape in history with 77 people, including four of Bell’s children, on a schooner called “The Pearl.” Unfortunately, they were captured and most of them were sold to slave owners in Vicksburg, Mississippi.
“Which is where we live now. Same land. Our church is there. I was baptized there,” she said on stage at Publick Playhouse. “I have goosebumps. This is where my family lived. It’s unbelievable.”
It’s also somewhat of a homecoming for actress Myeisha Essex, who portrayed Mary Bell in the film and graduated in 2013 from Howard University in D.C.
“This is the most unique project I’ve done because it was all virtual. I was setting up the camera, pressing play, recording and having to upload,” said Essex, who currently resides in Lincoln, Nebraska. “This is crazy this opportunity happened and even crazier [film] will premier here. It’s amazing.”
This article was written by the Washington Informer, read more stories like this here.
Photo: From left: Michael Burton, William G. Thomas III, Kwakiutl Dreher, Myeisha Essex and April Green participate in a discussion at the Publick Playhouse in Cheverly, Maryland, on June 2 about “The Bell Affair,” a live-animated documentary about Daniel and Mary Bell, slaves who fought for their freedom in the 19th century. Green resides in Vicksburg, Mississippi, and is a descendant of Daniel Bell. (Robert R. Roberts/The Washington Informer)
