Bowdoin hosts Transkriben-A-Thon to celebrate (Frederick) Douglass Day

The AmistadA Spanish slave ship was driven to Cuba in 1839 when African prisoners staged an uprising. They were then locked up in the USA, where their legal emergency became one Cause Célèbre for the abolitionist movement. The Supreme Court of the United States decided in favor of the slaves and decided that it had been illegally kidnapped and transported. The affair was the inspiration for the 1997 film Amistad Directed by Steven Spielberg.

Finneran, Senior Vice President for institutional research, analysis and advice, carefully examined pictures of the test text as they were archived in the congress library. She then transcribed her word for word and preserved the original spelling, the grammar and the punctuation. The document is uploaded, processed further and finally published in a format that is more accessible to students and scholars.

Finneran was among thirty members of the Bowdoin community who entered Ladd House on February 14 to transcribe documents as part of an event called Douglass Day. It is an annual program that marks the birth of Frederick Douglass (1818–1895), the American social reformer, abolitionist, speaker, writer and statesman. After escaping his sacher in Maryland, Douglass devoted his life to black civil rights and became the most important black activist of the 19th century. Douglass did not know his birthday, but decided to celebrate him on February 14th because his mother, as we said, called him her “little Valentine's Day”.