Douglass Day National Transcribe-a-thon

You’re invited to a birthday party for Frederick Douglass for Douglass Day 2021!

Born enslaved, Frederick Douglass emancipated himself at the age twenty and quickly became one of the preeminent intellectuals and activists of the nineteenth century. Although he never knew his birthdate, he chose to celebrate every year on February 14th. 

Together with libraries and digital scholarship centers around the country, we celebrate this date as a moment for creating and preserving Black history together.

This year, Cornell University Library celebrates with two events: a panel discussion about reading Douglass in 2021, with distinguished Cornell faculty, and a transcribe-a-thon of the papers of Mary Church Terrell.

In 2021, together with other groups around the country, we will transcribe the papers of Mary Church Terrell, a foundational Black activist, educator, thinker, and writer. She helped to create Douglass Day back in 1895. Soon after, she also helped found the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) and the NAACP. Come explore her fascinating papers with us! 

Transcriptions of historical documents like these make them available for digital searching, analysis, and future research. Help share Terrell’s legacies with future generations.
 
No experience needed. Drop in at the Zoom meeting, choose a letter or diary entry of Mary Church Terrell’s to transcribe, and get help when you need it. Enjoy exploration, music, and camaraderie with others from Cornell and Ithaca. 

Douglass Day 2021 is presented by:
Center for Black Digital Research, Penn State
By the People, Library of Congress
Penn State University Libraries and the College of Liberal Arts

Sponsored locally by:
Cornell University Library Digital CoLab
Cornell University Library Rare and Distinctive (RAD) Collections