The River Campus Libraries was awarded the best “Collection-Focused” film at the 2019 ARLIES Film Festival at the recent Association of Research Libraries meeting in Minneapolis. “Farewell to Frederick Douglass” was produced by Matthew Mann, University of Rochester Communications, narrated by Autumn Haag, Special Collections Librarian/Archivist for Research & Collections, and performed by Jonathan Rhodes '20E (tenor), and Lee Wright '03E, '18E (DMA, piano), Eastman School of Music.

“Farewell to Frederick Douglass” was written by Englishwoman Julia Griffiths, a close companion and fellow abolitionist of Douglass’s in 1847 when Douglass was getting ready to leave England where he had lived to avoid being recaptured after his escape from enslavement in Maryland. Only two copies of the sheet music are known to exist—one in the Department of Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation and the other at the British Library in London.