UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Around the turn of the 20th century, African American communities held celebrations honoring Frederick Douglass on Feb. 14, Douglass’ chosen birthday. Frederick Douglass emancipated himself from slavery as a young man and went on to become a great writer, publisher, Civil Rights activist, government official, and leader of the Colored Conventions movement. The celebrations of his birthday came to be known as Douglass Day and helped give rise to Black History Month, which is celebrated each February.

In 2017, the founders of the Colored Conventions Project (CCP), part of the Center for Black Digital Research, housed in the College of the Liberal Arts and Penn State University Libraries, resurrected the event. Each year, they plan a “transcribe-a-thon” during which groups from around the country and around the world gathered to transcribe important documents in Black history so they can be digitized and available for all to learn from.

Roughly 4,500 participants are expected to transcribe thousands of pages of digitized materials about the Colored Conventions. The program is open to anyone with a laptop, and no background knowledge or special training is required. Douglass Day is sponsored by the Center for Black Digital Research and the Department of African American Studies. Visit DouglassDay.org to sign up for Douglass Day 2022, follow @DouglassDayorg on Twitter, or contact douglassdayorg@gmail.com for more information.

The Colored Conventions were political gatherings held throughout the antebellum period and continuing for 30 years beyond the Civil War. They offered opportunities for free-born and formerly enslaved African Americans to organize and strategize for racial justice. The CCP is an interdisciplinary research hub that uses digital tools to bring the buried history of 19th-century Black organizing to life.

Each year, Douglass Day transcribers, who meet in various locations or work remotely, take on a new project. Douglass Day 2021 partnered with the Library of Congress to focus on transcribing the works of Mary Church Terrell, a well-known African American activist who championed racial equality and women's suffrage in the late 19th and early 20th century. The focus of Douglass Day 2022 is the women of the Colored Conventions.

“We have thousands of documents from the historic Colored Conventions, but only a very few actually mention the women who did so much to help organize, fundraise, host, and coordinate the convention meetings all across the United States and Canada,” said Jim Casey, associate director of the Center for Black Digital Research and co-director of the Colored Conventions Project and Douglass Day. “The Colored Conventions Project has accumulated a list of 150 mentions of women’s roles in the conventions, but we know there’s a whole lot more left to find and learn about.”

Along with creating opportunities for people to participate in the preservation and memory of these important collective histories, Casey said part of the goal of this year’s Douglass Day is to advance new research on the history of Black political organizing and community building using digital technologies.

Denise Burgher, CCP Fellow and Douglass Day co-director, said the question, “Where did they go?” — the theme of the day — is a play on words.

“It addresses and interrogates the erasures from many 19th century and contemporary archives of the lives, words and labors of African American women. Asking the first question — ‘Where did they go?’ —invites the consideration that Black women are in the archives, but we need to look more carefully.”

The question, she said, also functions as a springboard to other questions. Where did they stay? What did they bring? What did they talk about? Where did they come from?

“All of these questions lead us to the rich, interesting and critically important activist, organizer, care work, lives and work of Black women during the Colored Conventions Movement and beyond," said Burgher.