Star Democrat, “Controversy arises over new Frederick Douglass mural in Easton” [Natalie Jones; November 22, 2023]

EASTON — Some county residents and descendants of Frederick Douglass are raising concerns about the appropriateness of a new mural depicting the famous local abolitionist along a prominent street in Easton.

“Liberty,” a 21-foot-tall and 16-foot-wide mural by artist Adam Himoff, was unveiled earlier this month. The prominent artwork, featured in the alley next to Out of the Fire, portrays a modern version of Douglass, who is shown squatting down and wearing Converse All-Stars and a large wristwatch.

The mural was commissioned by the Dock Street Foundation, members of which had seen the artwork and wanted to bring it to Easton.

However, some local Black residents, including one of Douglass’ descendants, spoke out at the Easton Town Council meeting Monday evening, raising concerns with how Douglass was represented and the mural’s placement in a highly visible location, while others voiced upset about not being given a voice in the rendering.

Moonyene Jackson, a former town council member and member of Fred’s Army, an organization that worked to bring a Douglass monument in Easton, said those who applied for permission to erect the mural should have had the courtesy to reach out to residents who had worked to bring recognition of the African-American experience to the area.

“It’s a real insult that people want to talk about my heritage and not consult me…(and) the wider community,” she said, adding that she wished there was an opportunity for herself and others to share their perspectives.

Jackson also questioned the Historic District Commission’s decision to approve the mural in its current location, asking the council for support in waiving fees to appeal the board’s decision.

“We need to hear the voices of those people who have studied, who are informed, who have a conscious consciousness about making certain the African-American experience is realized,” she said.

“There’s a way we want to be portrayed — and this is not about the art or the artist — the art itself is wonderful, but it doesn’t belong on the public building, in the public square, in the historic district,” she said. “That’s the issue.”

Council President Frank Gunsallus briefly chimed in to clarify the building was private property and the art was funded by private donations, though the art’s installation was approved by the Historic District Commission.

Tarence Bailey, Sr., Douglass’ fifth great-nephew, said when one of his older family members found out about the mural, he called Bailey, asking, “Why is Uncle Frederick on that wall looking like a thug?”

“That picture does not look like the ambassador to Haiti. It does not look like the Recorder of Deeds. It does not look like a U.S. Marshal. (It) does not look like the man who sat with Abraham Lincoln and convinced him to let Blacks fight for their own freedom in the 54th Massachusetts,” he said. “That doesn’t represent that.”

Bailey added that even though Douglass is in the public domain, he’s a family name in Talbot County. The family was not given a heads up or approached about the mural ahead of time, he said later.

“When stuff like that is done, just because you can — ‘Oh, he’s in the public domain, he belongs to everybody — well, he does, but these things have to be done with tact, taste and respect. He has family here,” he said.Later, he added: “If I had a son young enough, I would not want my son seeing that and trying to aspire to that.”

Stephanie Chester, one of the original members of Fred’s Army, expressed distaste for the depiction, echoing Bailey in saying Douglass “looked like a thug” in the mural.

Pamela Gates, who grew up in the 1950s and early 60s, said she wanted children of today to understand that they were to stand up, not stoop, for their beliefs.

“…We witnessed the struggle and we saw the accomplishment, and I think that this particular picture, in the context which it is presented in Easton, is not encouraging or is not something we want our children to see,” she said, later adding: “Someone said we are not judged by the content of our character, and that character there — I don’t want Frederick Douglass judged by that content.”

Easton resident John Mann countered some of the arguments made, pointing out that the Historic District Commission did not deal with content, only town guidelines. Regulating content that private citizens place on their property becomes a First Amendment issue, he said, and that could tread into “dangerous territory.”

In an emailed statement, Himoff, who watched the testimony shared during Monday’s council meeting, said he appreciated those who were inspired by the work, but he had also learned “enormously” from those who don’t like or feel comfortable with the image.

“I think we can agree that there is so much work and healing left to be done. Should we keep our historical heroes frozen in time or should we explore their place in our current era? I think the conversation is worth having,” he said in the statement. ”What inspires me is that a group of people in the town Frederick Douglass was born in and enslaved in is willing to have the discussion, and I hope that participants on both sides recognize that all parties involved come to it with love and adoration for the tremendous man that Frederick Douglass was.”

At the close of the meeting, several council members thanked those who spoke up to share their perspectives.

Speaking to the community as a whole, Ward 4 Councilman Rev. Elmer Davis Jr. said his own life had been threatened over the portrait, which he did not have involvement with as a council member. Still, he assured those who spoke, saying they had been heard.

”Say what you have to say, stand where you need to stand and hear what I’m trying to tell you: people don’t understand, people can’t stand what they don’t understand,” he said. “Some people can’t stand to look at you because they don’t understand you and wonder how you are making it, because you’re still standing.”

”…I’m not an artist, but everything I’ve seen of Frederick Douglass, he’s standing up,” Davis added. “That speaks volumes — that he always stands up.”

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Excerpted from full Star Democrat article *HERE*

Cambridge Spy; “Easton Council Highlights: Sharing Perspectives on the Frederick Douglass Mural” [November 21, 2023]. **

** Note: This link provides YouTube links to public testimony regarding the new mural in Easton. **

AARCH Society hosts Jenny Masur (NPS, ret.) book talk “Maryland Freedom Seekers on the Underground Railroad” December 10, 2023 2pm – 3pm @ C. Burr Artz Public Library in Frederick City

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Join Jenny Masur, author of “Maryland Freedom Seekers on the Underground Railroad,” to hear stories of enslaved people navigating perilous journeys helped along by members of the Underground Railroad. Jenny holds a Ph.D. in anthropology and worked for 17 years for the National Park Service as national capital region manager for the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom.

This event will be December 10, 2023 from 2:00PM – 3:00PM held at the C. Burr Artz Library in the Community Room. We are grateful to partner with Frederick County Public Libraries for this African American history event.

For more information on the event visit AARCH Society website -> *here*

young Douglassonians outside of the Growlery at Cedar Hill on recent walking tour

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Editor’s Note: All walking tours are family-friendly, with students always welcome!

Washington Post: “Should Frederick Douglass be posed in a rap squat? Descendants say no.” [November 16, 2023; Petula Dvorak]

Profile mural of Frederick (Bailey) Douglass on Howard Street in Baltimore City, 2019.
Photo by Lost History Associates.

[This is NOT the mural in Easton, Maryland which is at the current center of debate. We have decided not to include an image of the Easton mural.]

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The Washington Post; By: Petula Dvorak (November 16, 2023)

The man on the building-high mural is crouched in a rap squat, his suit cut slim and feet in high-top Converse sneakers. Behind him, the word “liberty” appears as spray-painted graffiti, still dripping. A chunky watch adorns his wrist.

The hair is familiar, the gaze “majestic in his wrath,” as women’s rights activist Elizabeth Cady Stanton once called it.

There’s no mistaking Frederick Douglass — reimagined as, what, Doug E. Fresh?

The interpretation, unveiled at a recent festival in the Chesapeake tidewater hamlet of Easton, is dividing the town and fueling debate over how America redefines and reimagines its ever-present past.

Where some onlookers see a modern tribute to a consequential abolitionist and presidential adviser renowned for his fiery oration, others see an insult.

The divisions are felt deeply here in Talbot County, where a young Frederick Bailey — later Douglass — was once enslaved. Members of the Bailey family, direct descendants of Douglass who remained on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, say the piece is degrading.

“Have you seen the mural that has Uncle Frederick looking like some kind of street thug?” is what Tarence Bailey, 48, reported hearing from family elders the morning the mural went up. “Something needs to be done about it and it needs to come down,” said Bailey, who is the five-times-great-nephew of Douglass.

He said no one in Easton consulted the family before the mural went up. Now, the family is starting a petition and planning demonstrations to urge its removal.

“It may be legal to put it up,” Bailey said. “But it’s not respectful.”

“Frederick Douglass never wanted to be viewed as an amiable slave or viewed as a Black man on his knees,” Bailey expanded, in a statement he was still crafting as word of the mural spread.

An effort that began as one of those small-town, economic-revival public art projects, where installations accompany cute restaurants and knickknackeries that sell nautical crafts made of oyster shells, has focused attention on an essential question: Who gets to tell these stories — and how — in a country divided over what work must come down and what should rise?

Historians and teachers I interviewed drew different conclusions about the piece.

It’s “truly distasteful,” said one.

“To have Frederick Douglass come back up again, but in this positive, contemporary light is just really an awesome thing,” said another.

“What’s next, Harriet Tubman in booty shorts?” asked a third.

Reached by phone, mural artist Adam Himoff said he is motivated to make sense of the past and the present, so he placed Douglass in the context of popular Black icons today — the well-tailored suit, the watch, the sneakers, that crouch. Jay-Z, Lil’ Kim, Bill Clinton and thousands of Instagrammers pose in the #rapsquat.

“Oh, I like it,” said Marquis Taylor, a PhD student in history at Northwestern University and a Howard University trustee who recently curated a Douglass exhibit.

Taylor said it made Douglass fresh and relatable. Then I asked him if it would change his mind to know the artist is a White guy, a former finance bro who is now working as an artist.

“Wait, can I retract my statement?” Taylor laughed.

Himoff was going for that very reaction. He said he grew up as a Jewish kid in 1990s New York City, influenced by the diversity of his home and awakened to his heritage as he learned about the Holocaust, inspired by the power and struggle of Black America as he read Douglass’s speeches.

After years doing what society told him to do in venture capital and finance, he’s now making art in Park City, Utah. Is his work any less powerful because of who he is?

“Not at all,” said one of the esteemed reviewers, a Black woman who also spent time in New York, now a teacher at my son’s performing arts school in D.C.

I showed it to her at a parent meeting one night this week (and promised my son I wouldn’t use her name). But she gasped when I pulled out the photocopy of the print I had in an envelope.

“Beautiful,” she whispered, running her fingers over Douglass’s image.

The same happened when I showed it to dozens of kids at the school.

“I love it!” one of the teens said.

“It’s TOUGH,” another interjected, jumping up and down and fist-pumping the air.

“He’s so, um, relatable like this,” another one told me.

Sure, it’s cool, like her generation’s hip-hop aesthetic, said Ida E. Jones, a historian, author and university archivist at Morgan State University.

“But it’s tone deaf,” Jones said. “This isn’t liberty. It’s cool, but it doesn’t represent liberty.”

It’s especially important to remember that Douglass, one of the most photographed people of the 19th century, was meticulous in tailoring his image. He didn’t smile, his gaze was riveting. He insisted on being serious. Would he hate this?

Jones said the mural needs context and explanation. Putting Douglass in a rapper pose, she said, “dilutes the gravity of the person.”

John H. Muller, who gives tours of murals and historic points relating to Douglass all over D.C. said the pose — especially in a mural in Easton — is offensive. The rap squat came from prison subculture and was first called the prison pose, supposedly a crouch meant to look menacing. To depict Douglass this way, in the town where he was jailed as a teen for his attempt to find freedom in a Chesapeake Bay log canoe, is disrespectful, he wrote in a blog post.

Richard Marks, a local philanthropist, commissioned the piece for a building he owns and got town approval to hang it, printed on cotton and stretched on an aluminum frame.

He is thrilled that people are talking about it.

“We haven’t had this much excitement since we finally got rid of ‘Talbot Boys Statue,’” Marks said.

Easton drew national attention last year as it removed Maryland’s last known Confederate monument on public land, a tribute to locals who fought for the South that sat outside the county courthouse for more than a century.

In that downtown where the offensive monument once stood, Douglass’s defiant gaze set upon our imperfect world and the town that jailed him is a fine replacement, thinks Johnson, the historian.

Rising high across from a gas station and next to a restaurant on Washington Avenue, Douglass looms large over the town’s main street.

Lamar Greene, a lifelong resident of Easton, looked up as he was crossing the street with his 3-year-old grandson on Thursday.

“I like it. It tells me that if he was here today, he’d make people feel inspired,” Greene said. “It makes me feel something.”

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Excerpted from full Washington Post article *HERE*

Brief note on distasteful mural of Frederick Douglass in Easton, Maryland

Back in 1836 as the sun rose over the county jail in Easton, Maryland and the last local veteran of the Continental Army rang the town bell at the adjacent county courthouse a young Frederick Bailey sat imprisoned for suspicions of planning to flee his enslavement.

In November 2023 a mural of Frederick (Bailey) Douglass was installed in Easton, Maryland that with, or without, intention is parodying the depths of the struggles – from enslavement and incarceration – in which Mr. Douglass rose to become known around the world in his lifetime and today.

In his lifetime, Mr. Douglass was deliberate and sensitive in how he was represented in visual and print culture. There is an abundance of scholarship on Mr. Douglass and photography. Mr. Douglass was conscientious of how he – and his family – were represented in their lifetimes, aware that images of him and his family would live in the public domain well past their own lives.

Apparently, this new mural of Mr. Douglass in Easton was planned, drafted and installed without any consultation from members of the Bailey family, who are not only prominent in Talbot County but who took the lead on the installation of a Douglass-themed mural in Easton in 2021.

We are presently unaware of many of the details, specifics and backstory of this new mural of Mr. Douglass in Easton, however, none of this information would change the caricatured nature of the mural.

In the mural, Mr. Douglass would appear to be posing inside of a nightclub (think the Black Hole on Georgia Avenue in Washington City during the 1990s) and/or inside of some sort of correctional institution. The practice of getting a Polaroid picture by yourself, or among friends, against some sort of themed backdrop at a club is known by those who lived through those times. Furthermore, there was (is) a practice among those serving time in the Bureau of Prisons and/or local jails to take pictures by themselves, with fellow inmates and/or with family striking a pose that is similar to the pose in which Mr. Douglass is portrayed in this new mural.

Personally, in the past and presently I have corresponded with friends and Old Anacostia Douglassonians who are serving time in FCIs from Cumberland, Maryland to Danbury Connecticut. These are men I know and men who have, in their own way, guarded and preserved the legacy and spirit of Frederick Douglass in Old Anacostia, where murals of Mr. Douglass are numerous.

There are hundreds of murals of Frederick Douglass across the country, and dozens in the DC / Baltimore area. Most of the murals have components of history, public education and/or an inspirational message. Some of these murals, including several in Rochester, New York, depict Mr. Douglass in modern settings and/or have some elements of modernism and/or even futurism, such as the mural at 16th and U Street in Historic Old Anacostia.

However, none of these murals satirize and/or make a farce of Mr. Douglass and his life in the way that this new mural in Easton has. The graffiti-stylized “LIBERTY” with the dripping paint as a backdrop is as contrived as the position Mr. Douglass is depicted in and the clothes he wears. Yes, Mr. Douglass was a well-attired man during his life, and, yes, he had a gold pocket watch he was known to let his grandchildren play with. However, the spirit of this new mural comes across as tone-deaf, to be polite, and can be easily interpreted as depicting Mr. Douglass attending a night club and/or posing for a photo in the visiting room of a jail and/or penitentiary.

Considering that Mr. Douglass was acutely aware of how he was represented, considering that Mr. Douglass was imprisoned in Easton, Maryland for a pivotal two weeks of his yet determined life, this mural is truly distasteful and counter to preserving the spirit, legacy and tradition of Mr. Douglass and all he worked to achieve in his life.

John Muller / Lost History Associates

Statement on behalf of Old Anacostia Douglassonians & W Street Douglassonians

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Schedule of November / December 2023 Frederick Douglass & Mark Twain Walking Tours -> Washington, D.C. (Old Anacostia & Capitol Hill), Baltimore City (Fell’s Point) & Frederick City

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Walking Tour: The Lost History of Frederick Douglass in Old Anacostia 

Saturday, November 11, 2023; 9:30 AM 

Saturday, December 16, 2023; 9:30 AM

Visitor Center; Frederick Douglass National Historic Site

1411 W Street SE

Washington, DC 20020

Street & Public parking available; accessible via Metro rail Anacostia

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Walking Tour: Lost History of Frederick (Bailey) Douglass in Baltimore (Fell’s Point)

Sunday, November 12, 2023; 9:00 AM – 10:45 AM

Sunday, November 12, 2023; 11:30 AM – 1:15 PM

Sunday, December 24, 2023; 9:00AM – 10:45 AM

Frederick Douglass-Isaac Myers Maritime Park 

1417 Thames Street

Baltimore, MD 21231

Street & Public parking available 

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Frederick Douglass in Capitol Hill Walking Tour

Saturday, November 18, 2023; 11:30 AM 

Saturday, December 16, 2023; 12:30 PM 

Court of Neptune Fountain; Jefferson Building – Library of Congress

101 Independence Ave SE

Washington, DC 20543

Metro: Union Station (Red Line); Capitol South (Orange, Blue, Silver Line)

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Lost History of Mark Twain in Old Washington City  

Saturday, November 18, 2023; 9:00 AM

Saturday, December 16, 2023; 3:30 PM

Andrew Jackson Statue 

Lafayette Square (across the street from White House)

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue & 16th St. NW

Washington, D.C. 20001

Accessible via Metro rail McPherson Square, Farragut West, Farragut Square & Metro Bus; limited parking available downtown

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Lost History of Frederick Douglass & Frederick City

Saturday, December 2, 2023; 1:00 PM 

Roger B. Taney House (private residence, gather on the street)

121 S. Bentz Street

Frederick, Maryland 21701  

Street & Public parking available throughout town

VIDEO: -> “The Washerwomen of Baltimore, 1800-1864” [Lunch & Learn sponsored by Enoch Pratt Free Library; presentation by Dr. Papenfuse; November 9, 2023 @ 1PM EST]

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Please join former Maryland State Archivist, Dr. Edward C. Papenfuse, as he shares his research on the under-appreciated and unknown washerwomen of Baltimore during the period of 1800 to 1864 and explores what the archival sources reveal. An expert in primary source research, Dr. Papenfuse will be emphasizing what can be learned from the archival sources about the many free Black and enslaved women in Baltimore who served as washerwomen to do the laundry in Baltimore city and supported their families in the process.

The presentation will include some biographical examples including the mothers of Christian Fleetwood, medal of honor winner, and his best friend, Alfred Ward Handy, who together edited and contributed to The Lyceum Observer, said to be the first newspaper in the Upper South to be owned and operated by an African American.