Douglass Day preserves Black history

On Feb. 14 in the Frieson Black Cultural Center from 12-3 p.m., the campus public had the opportunity to digitally transcribe papers and letters by Mary Ann Shadd Cary, a 19th-century anti-slavery activist, editor, lawyer, teacher and suffragist who emigrated to Canada and became the first Black woman newspaper editor in North America.

Every Valentine’s Day, universities around the nation participate in Douglass Day to celebrate the chosen birthday of abolitionist Frederick Douglass by conducting a crowdsourced transcription project to preserve the works of Black activists and writers.

Like Shadd Cary, the figures selected by the national Douglass Day organization are often Black women such as Anna Julia Cooper, the focus of the 2020 celebration, and Mary Church Terrell, whose works were transcribed in 2021.

The event included cake provided by Mer Mer’s Bakery on Gay Street, owned and operated by Chandra Taylor, as well as lunch. The event also provided a means for students to engage in an activity usually reserved for archivists and historians.

Each participant logged into an online platform where they transcribed a photo of one of Shadd Cary’s writings into text. The thousands of transcriptions produced around the nation are compared with each other to create a transcription that will be entered into the historical record.

DANIEL DASSOW Editor-in-Chief

The celebration is sponsored annually by the departments of English, History and Africana Studies as well as the Humanities Center, UT Libraries, UT Special Collections and the Division of Diversity and Engagement.

Shaina Destine, assistant professor and humanities librarian at Hodges Library, is chair of the Douglass Day committee at UT and helped plan this year’s celebration.

“Bring your laptops and whatever devices you have that you can help transcribe and see how we really are democratizing Black history, how you can affect the archives in real ways,” Destine said.

On Monday evening, Nneka Dennie, assistant professor of history at Washington and Lee University and a current postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Black Digital Research at Penn State, delivered the annual Douglass Day plenary address in Hodges Library.

Dennie, whose work locates the origins of Black radical feminism in the 19th century through the work of figures like Shadd Cary, spoke about Shadd Cary’s own characterization of herself as “insensible of boundaries.”

“She not only crossed geographical boundaries, but also pushed the boundaries of what Black women should be and say and do,” Dennie said.

Often sidelined in the telling of Black history, Shadd Cary’s legacy is increasingly cemented through research and archival work.