Douglass Day Transcription Event
On Tuesday, Feb. 14, SUNY Geneseo faculty and staff held a transcribing event in honor of Fredrick Douglass’s chosen birthday. During the event, which took place on the Geneseo campus and at various locations globally, people transcribed the letters of Mary Ann Shadd Cary —an abolitionist activist, journalist, and newspaper editor.
Paul Schacht, Professor of English and Assistant to the Provost for Digital Learning and Scholarship, was one of the many faculty members who helped make the event possible at Geneseo.
“When I encountered Douglass Day, I thought, well, this is a fabulous event,” Schacht said. “It brings together Black History marks—[including] Frederick Douglass, who, as you know, is important to our region right here, and in particular, the city of Rochester… [the event is] not just to engage with those original historical materials, but to do so in a way that gives you the opportunity to understand how digital technology is transforming the way we do the work of history and the way we engage with the past, in general [and] in literature as well.”
Geneseo prides itself on its engagement with students, faculty, staff, and its local community. Having events on campus such as Douglass Day fosters a sense of integrative learning that allows students to engage with history: “It is especially important for us…given what we know about the campus climate at Geneseo and given what we know about the progress we need to make on diversity,” Schacht said. “It’s deeply connected to the work that we need to be doing at Geneseo to amplify Black voices, Black history, and Black activism, and to do better in these areas.”
Considering that February is Black History Month, on top of Douglass’s birth month, the transcription event allowed students to honor the work of Black Americans throughout history: “It is not just about the transcription,” Schact said, “it is about a joyous celebration of Black History and activism and building community right here on our own campus.”
Schact reported that as of Feb 9., the Douglass Day coordinators “Had about 7,000 participants sign up from across the US, Europe, and Africa. They said it’s really a global event, not just a national event. I think there’s 124 institutions that are participating. So they’ve got a combination of lots of individuals and some institutions,” he said.
Many voices in history remain in archives without digital access, so they become forgotten to the masses and accessible to a select few knowing where to look. This event, in turn, is meant to ameliorate that.
“When you transcribe all this content, it becomes machine readable. It’s searchable, and so they’re engaging people in transcribing both handwritten and print documents in order to create a whole corpus of text information for people [so that] they can search, they can analyze, they can look for interesting patterns and so on,” said Schacht. “All that kind of stuff is made possible by transcription.”
Schacht credits various other faculty and staff including Professor Medeiros, Associate Professor and Coordinator of Sociomedical Program, Alexis Clifton, the interim director of Teaching and Learning Center, and Justin Behrend, Professor of History: “We have all been working together to figure out how to put this on. And that’s not just testimony to how we get things done at Geneseo—by collaborating—but it’s also testimony to how this event stands at the intersection of a whole bunch of kinds of learning and ways of thinking and disciplines that our students need opportunities to engage in,” he said.
The event was specifically focused on the work of Mary Ann Shadd Cary, a figure for whom Schact has a deep admiration; “I find the life of Mary Ann Shadd Cary incredibly inspiring, as an example of what an individual can accomplish in spite of adversity, if they are deeply committed. And I find it inspiring … what we can accomplish when we work together,” Schacht said.
Schacht hopes that, through this event, the Geneseo community will see the value of coming together to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion, and the impact of keeping the history of those who were often silenced alive: “I don’t even need to tell you the challenges that we face here. They are significant and I know that some students sometimes feel discouraged by how large those challenges are. I have colleagues who feel discouraged. But we can make progress and do better if we work together as a community to do that.”