Center for the literary arts in New York State
DOUGLASS DAY CELEBRATION
Douglass Day Transcribe-a-thon
Noon to 3 p.m. Friday, February 13, 2026
University at Albany
Multi-Purpose Room, Campus Center West
1400 Washington Avenue
Albany NY 12222 - See map.
NOTE: All participants need to bring a laptop or tablet.
Join us in celebrating Frederick Douglass’s birthday and the ongoing work of writing and preserving Black history.
The Douglass Day Transcribe-a-thon -- douglassday.org -- is a national, crowdsourced transcription event to create new and free materials to learn Black history and enjoy a birthday cake honoring Frederick Douglass.
No pre-knowledge of history or transcription is required. Come and go anytime during the transcription event.
More resources for K-12 and college classroom materials for instructors interested in deeper incorporation into their classes. Learn more about the history of Douglass Day.
Presented by the UAlbany English Department and cosponsored by the University Auxiliary Services (UAS), the College of Arts & Sciences; the NYS Writers Institute; College of Arts & Science; University Auxiliary Services; School of Education; University Libraries; Africana, Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies; History Department; English Department StAR grant; and Information Sciences
More events at UAlbany on Friday, February 13
Toni Morrison exhibit unveiling
10 a.m. Science Library Lobby
We will unveil a new exhibit to honor Nobel Prize-winning novelist Toni Morrison (1931-2019), who taught at the University at Albany in the English Department from 1984 to 1989. The author of many classic works of literature, she wrote her masterpiece, Beloved (1987), while at UAlbany. The exhibit features the writing desk and chair she used during her tenure here.
Roundtable: Curating Black History with Autumn Womack and Dorothy Berry
11 a.m. Multi-Purpose Room, Campus Center West Addition
Autumn Womack, a professor at Princeton University, is the recent curator of the Princeton exhibit, “Toni Morrison: Sites of Memory,” and author of The Matter of Black Living: The Aesthetic Experiment of Racial Data, 1880-1930 (2022), winner of the 2022 the Modern Language Association’s William Sanders Scarborough Prize, and shortlisted for the Modernist Studies Association’s First Book Prize.
Dorothy Berry, archivist and writer, is the author of The House Archives Built & Other Thoughts on Black Archival Possibilities (2025). Featured at many cultural heritage institutions, her curatorial work is notable for implementing creative methods to make archival collections related to Black life more accessible and available, and for imagining new strategies for showcasing historical materials.