Today, the Emory Libraries joined the Colored Conventions Project in the national celebration of Frederick Douglass Day. The event brought together thousands of people from across the United States to eat cake, sing Happy Birthday, and work together to create new resources for the study of African American history.
Participants at the 2024 Douglass Day Transcribe-a-thon discuss documents.
Participants ate gingerbread chocolate cupcakes and transcribed Douglass’s correspondence housed at the Library of Congress. This year the event was sponsored by the Stuart A. Rose Manuscript Archives and Rare Book Library, the Emory Writing Program, and the Wayfinder Project Team. Check out some of the documents transcribed!
For more information on Douglass’s life and impact, visit the Colored Conventions Project Douglass Day website. There you will find freely available articles and lectures.
In addition to the resources provided above, you can research Douglass’s life and work via the Emory Libraries in the following ways:
Check out a Book
“Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass” by Frederick Douglass, 1846.
“Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom” by David W. Blight, 2018.
“Picturing Frederick Douglass: An Illustrated Biography of the Nineteenth Century’s Most Photographed American” by John Stauffer, 2015.
“The Life of Frederick Douglass: A Graphic Narrative of a Slave’s Journey from Bondage to Freedom” by David Walker, 2018.
Both print and e-books like these are available via Library Search. Useful search strings include: Frederick Douglass (as author) and Antislavery Movements United States 19th Century.
Read an Article
“Before the North Star: Frederick Douglass’ Early Journalistic Career” by P.B. Perry in Phylon (1974).
“‘A Cultural Stronghold’: The ‘Anglo-African Newspaper and the Black Community of New York” by D Jackson in New York History (2004).
For more articles on Douglass try searching multi-disciplinary databases such as JSTOR, Project Muse, or Academic Search Complete.
View Documents Created by Douglass
“The North Star” – Search the North Star and other Douglass-edited newspapers.
Frederick Douglass Papers at the Library of Congress – Explore Douglass’s papers housed at the Library of Congress.
The Frederick Douglass Papers – Read edited versions of Douglass’s papers from Indiana University.
Black Abolitionist Papers – Search the Black Abolitionist Papers database for correspondence from Douglass and other abolitionists.
Ancestry.com – View Douglass’s family tree, his grave, and documents related to his life.
For more information about our Black history collections, contact African American Studies and US History librarian Erica Bruchko
Happy birthday, Frederick Douglass, and happy Black History Month from the Emory Libraries!