Credits

Anthony Wilcox
Daniel Bell

Myeisha Essex
Mary Bell

Deborah Madick
Susan Armistead

Arista Jackson
Ann Bell

Darla Davenport
Lucy Bell

Don White
Robert Armistead

Wayne Matychuk
Francis Scott Key

John L. Shortt
Reuben Crandall

John Leonard Harris, Sr.
Doxology Narrator

Paul Kandarian
John J. Dermott

Rick Daniels
Joseph H. Bradley

Steve Kennevan
Richard Coxe

Colby Coash
Roger B. Taney

Melinda Simonsen
Ann Key Taney

Christian Velez
Constable H. B. Robertson

Daniel Nufer
Constable Madison Jeffers

Kimba Clemmons
Joe Thompson

Japrice Green
Worker #1

Malik Fortner
Worker #2

Shea Butler
Worker #3

Matthew Kischer
Witness

Jeff Porter
George Naylor

Kyle Ament
Judge William Cranch

Brenna Howell
Woman #1

Mary Rogers
Woman #2

Mary White
Woman #3

Katie Otten
Nurse

Tony A. Grizzel
Slave Trader #1

Patrick Lescarbeau
White Male Nurse #2

Jason Iannone
Slaveholder's Attorney

Joseph Palmateer
Juror

Larry Woods
Richard Butt

Randy Busch
Daniel Drayton

Jarod Cernousek
White Guard

Zahir Hill Jr.
Daniel Bell Jr.

Za'Maya Hill
Caroline Bell

Zamir Hill
George Bell

Zaria Hill
Catherine Bell

Kailyn Desir
Mary Ellen Bell

Arielle Desir
Eleanora Bell

Michael Burton
Executive Producer, Supervising Producer, Post-Production Supervisor, Lead VFX Artist

Michael Burton is a digital artist, film director, and animation producer. Burton combines art, film, and animation to create historically based stories. He has produced several hybrid-animation shorts including Gold Slipper by Willa Cather (2020), Anna (2018), and Freedom Stories (2022). Burton produced and animated the feature film The Bell Affair (2022). Burton's digital artwork has been featured across the country and in solo exhibitions at the National Willa Cather Center in Red Cloud, Nebraska, the Denver Art Museum, RISD Art Museum, Joslyn Art Museum, Digital Graffiti in Alys Beach, Florida, and the Sheldon Art Museum. Burton's recent solo exhibition of digital art and NFTs titled Dance Floor of the Sky was hosted at Kiechel Fine Art and featured a multi-channel projection room with a gallery of printed digital paintings. Burton has completed animations for a PBS documentary titled On a Knife's Edge, which premiered on America ReFramed in 2017. His projects were funded by The National Endowment for the Humanities, Maryland Humanities, ITVS, NET television, The Willa Cather Foundation, and Vision Maker Media. Burton and the Animating History Team have screened their films at the New Media Film Festival (Best Animation), Atlantic Selects, Utopia, Hampton, BronzeLens, HipHop, and Virginia Film Festivals. From 2016-2019, Burton served as Director of the Cube Art Project, a biannual juried international digital art competition hosted by the City of Lincoln (Nebraska). He is currently the director of the Robert Hillestad Textiles Gallery and an Assistant Professor of Foundation Art and Design at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He received his M.F.A. from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 2007 and B.F.A. from Green Mountain College in 2000.

Kwakiutl L. Dreher
Executive Producer, Director, Writer

Kwakiutl L. Dreher is a screenwriter, actor, director, playwright, and author. A native of South Carolina, she writes about African American literature, film, visual, and popular culture. She is the author of Dancing on the White Page: Black Women Entertainers Writing Autobiography (SUNY Press) and numerous articles and essays. Dreher wrote and acted in Anna (2018). She has also played Mamie Till in Anne & Emmett, Mrs. Harriet Gottlieb in Dead Man's Cellphone, and Louise in the film The Eyes of Isabelle. Her one-woman show, In A Smoke-Filled Room, Color Matters, was a playlab selection at the Great Plains Theater Festival in 2013 after its theatrical debut at The Haymarket Theater in Lincoln, Nebraska. A storyteller at heart, she has written and recorded stories for public radio. Dreher is currently at work on a murder mystery set in her hometown, Columbia, South Carolina. She is an Associate Professor of English and African American Studies at the University of Nebraska.

William G. Thomas III
Executive Producer, Director, Writer

William G. Thomas III is an award-winning historian, author, and film producer. A native of Alexandria, Virginia, he writes about American history, law, slavery, and the Civil War. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow and a Lincoln Prize Finalist. His recent book, A Question of Freedom: The Families Who Challenged Slavery from the Nation's Founding to the Civil War (Yale University Press, 2020), won the 2021 Mark Lynton Prize. A digital media historian, Thomas was co-editor of the acclaimed digital project, The Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War. He has published essays in the American Historical Review, Civil War History, Southern Spaces, Lapham's Quarterly, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. Thomas has written and produced documentary films since 1999. He co-wrote with George H. Gilliam "The Ground Beneath Our Feet: Virginia's History Since the Civil War," a series of four documentary films that aired from 1999-2004 on PBS stations in Virginia (WCVE). The hour-long episode "Massive Resistance" in 2000 was an Emmy nominated film for the Washington, D.C., chapter of the National Television National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. He co-produced Rising Up: a documentary on the Civil Rights era (2008) with Bill Reifenberger for WCVE Richmond, an hour-long documentary about the Civil Rights Movement in Virginia. Rising Up aired in February 2008 on WCVE and over 20 stations through the National Education Television PBS affiliates.

• Film production by Western Meadowlark LLC
• Background production funded by the Maryland Humanities Council
• Major support by the National Endowment for the Humanities