This exhibition considers ithe historic and contemporary role photography and film have played in remembering legacies of slavery and its aftermath. It also examines the social lives of a diverse group of Americans within various places—on the land, at home, in photographic albums, at historic sites, and in public memory. Including nineteenth-century photographs made by Cincinnati studio photographer James Presley Ball and other photographs of Black Americans taken during the ongoing struggle for freedom, Free as they want to be offers a view of a people who expressed their desire to be free in early photographic portraits.