The Message

This is Frederick Douglass breathing life into the abstract dyad of slavery and freedom—particularly the latter. There was a prayer and the pledge of allegiance and a report from the superintendent on “academic freedom.” From that point, allusions to Mary’s case crept into the board’s business until about an hour in, when, the undercard having been completed, the main event commenced. And what that meant was not just freedom but power. At the end of the film the man declared, with a hint of triumph, that the original rulers of the land had at last returned.