Douglas Day Event 2023

I had a lot of questions when I walked into the business hall at Rowan University on February 14th, 2023 to help work on transcribing documents for Douglas Day. What is Douglas Day? What are we transcribing? How do you transcribe documents? Overall I was nervous. Walking into the classroom where the event was taking place I was greeted with familiar faces. There were quite a few people from my classes at the event, which made me feel better. However, those questions still lingered in my head. Luckily, there were so many wonderful people there to help guide us and help us understand what we were going to accomplish that day. First I found out that the event was called Douglas day because the transcribe event was being held on Fredrick Douglas’s birthday. Then, we had a little introduction on Mary Ann Shadd Cary, the woman who’s documents we were going to transcribe. The documents were mainly from the middle to the late 1800s. Most were letters, some were envelopes, but all had a major significance to who she was and what she accomplished. She was an advocate for African-Americans, a lawyer, an educator, a journalist, and a woman of color. She did so much during that time that now goes unnoticed. I learned that the Douglas day event was not only to get people involved in transcribing documents, but also to inform us about a woman who was close to being forgotten in history. Having the privilege to help prevent her from being forgotten, and to help inform other people of all the things she did, was truly an honor. The people that were there at the event and the documents we transcribed made me realize how important history is and how much I enjoy it. If another event like this one comes up I will definitely go and help in any way possible.