When
Where
It's a party!
Help us celebrate Frederick Douglass's birthday, also known as Douglass Day, an annual global transcribe-a-thon and a collective action for Black history. Thousands of participants come together at more than 100 simultaneous events around the world to transcribe materials of Black scholars and thinkers.
The 2026 theme is “All Rights for All: Equality and the Colored Conventions Movement.” We are focusing on the struggles for citizenship, equality, and belonging from the Colored Conventions movement, a series of interconnected local, regional and national social movements towards African American abolition before, during and after the Civil War. We want to reconsider how far we have come and where we want to go. The Colored Conventions include rich historical documents and debates that speak directly to our fight today to secure and preserve our citizenship and civil rights.
Transcribing will be done on Zooniverse, a citizen science and crowdsourcing platform hosted by the Adler Planetarium and Oxford University. Douglass Day invites people from all backgrounds to join in this effort to make Black history more widely accessible and searchable.
Details:
- No experience is necessary. We'll help you get started.
- The party kicks off at 10am promptly. Drop by anytime.
- If you bring your own device, we encourage that you can comfortably look at an image on-screen, and type with it. We will also have some computers available.
- For a preview of what's involved, visit DouglassDay.org.
- Grab a cupcake when you're done!
Who was Frederick Douglass?
Frederick Douglass, (1818-1895), was an American abolitionist, social reformer, orator, writer, and statesman. Because he was born into bondage and never knew his birth date, Douglass chose to recognize it on February 14. After escaping from slavery in Maryland, he became the most important leader of the movement for African American Civil Rights in the 19th century. He is the author of the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845), My Bondage and My Freedom (1855), and Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1882, revised 1891).
This event is proudly co-sponsored by the African American Museum of Southern Arizona: "We are a movement, not just a museum!"