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Frederick Douglass Day Transcribe-A-Thon

Celebrate Douglass' birthday with us by participating in a nationwide crowdsourcing transcription project. We'll have computers, cake, and a live-stream of the main event at the Library of Congress.

Every year the Library of Congress partners with Douglass Day to choose a transcription project from the African American Perspectives Collection. Then, on Douglass' birthday, people around the nation join together to transcribe, learn and celebrate from their own locations. Come for just an hour or stay all day, it's up to you. We'll supply the computers and wi-fi, you bring reading and deciphering skills and a curious mind! It's a birthday party, so, yes, there will be cake, designed by Kennedy's Kakes!

This year's theme is You Make History, because all of us are a part of history, and our choices matter in what history is remembered and preserved.

We will be transcribing documents from the African American Perspectives Collection, which includes W. E. B. Du Bois’s The Brownies’ Book, one of the first monthlies for African American children, and Abby Fisher’s cookbook, What Mrs. Fisher Knows about Old Southern Cooking. Fisher, possibly a formerly enslaved woman from Alabama, would move to California and publish one of the first cookbooks by an African American woman in 1881. Organizers expect the project to unearth other historical treasures, and you could be the person to discover them!

The day's schedule is as follows:

10:00 to 12:00

Transcribing

12:00 to 12:30pm

Livestream of the program from the capitol:

-“Lift Every Voice and Sing”
-Overview for the Douglass Day program
-Speakers
-Tutorial on Transcribing at the LOC
-Bake Off Details

12:30 to 1:00

Transcribing

1:00 to 1:30pm

Livestream from the capitol resumes:

-Sing “Happy birthday”
-A dramatic reading of “Why Hold a Colored Convention?” by Hassan El-Amin & introductions

1:30 to 2:00pm

Transcribing

2:00 to 2:20pm

Livestream from the capitol resumes:

-Community Conversation

2:20 to 2:45pm

Transcribing

2:45 to 3:00pm

Livestream from the capitol resumes:

-Highlights from social media
-Bake Off Prizes
-Closing Reflections

3:00pm to 5:00pm

Transcribing

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