“We Make History When We Write History”

The Daniel Murray Collection at the Library of Congress

By Denise Burgher and Janel Moore-Almond and Kaitlyn Tanis

Center for Black Digital Research Curriculum Committee


    Daniel Alexander Payne Murray (1853-1925)Anna Evans Murray (1857-1955)

Overview for Teachers

Douglass Day is a joyful celebration of Black history that highlights the importance of preserving the legacy of influential Black leaders that has been celebrated since 1895. To celebrate Douglass Day 2025 we are transcribing selections from the Daniel Murray Collection at the Library of Congress, and we invite you and your students to participate in this interesting and necessary work.

Here you will find lessons in the form of a unit plan for elementary to college level to engage your students with the life of Black librarian Daniel Murray, his eminent wife Anna Evans Murray and the combined legacies they and other Black librarians left which shaped the nations’ libraries through his work at The Library of Congress (LOC) and Mrs. Anna Evans Murray’s on the importance of early childhood education in America. Many students, and adults often do not know the names of the people who made the lives we enjoy possible, especially when these historic figures are not white. This unit plan is an effort to address these gaps.

Libraries, the places dedicated to collecting, storing and organizing books, maps, files, and all other types of information are critically important to the literacy of individuals, communities, societies, and the world. Long before computers existed, there were books and those books were contained in libraries. All of the information in computers was originally found in books which were stored in libraries! In libraries we can find books, DVDs, magazines, journals, maps, newspapers, musical scores, movies and from these primary and secondary sources, information about different subjects. We go to the library to explore and learn about things we are curious about with confidence that there are people who will help us research and find the sources we need. We go to libraries to work on research papers, do homework, apply for a job, take classes, read books, socialize and find answers to questions. But have you ever wondered, who put all of the information in libraries? Who chose the books and resources that are in libraries? Who organized the information in libraries, how and why? Librarians make all those choices. That means librarians, the people who collect, organize, store, and categorize information are very important.  

Daniel Murray shaped not just the holdings at the LOC, and as a consequence what libraries all over the United States contained, but the entire world. Black history, literature and the arts were proven to exist and have provenance beginning with Murray’s 1900 bibliography.  Librarians at the LOC used his bibliography to mount the first ever Negro exhibit at the Paris Worlds’ Fair. Then, his bibliography became the foundation for the holdings at the LOC. Libraries interested in Black writing used his bibliography which he expanded as a base and point of reference which in turn shaped collections around the world. Murray’s dedication to identifying and presenting Black literature proved that Black people created art that was excellent. 

Murray’s wife, Anna Evans Murray fought very hard to get Kindergarten and childcare for young children of working mothers. When Anna Murray first started advocating about the importance of Kindergarten people ignored her. She had to fight for years to get people to consider the efficacy of early childhood education. Now, in America most of us have graduated from Kindergarten! As we celebrate American history we continue to learn about the many unsung people and the work of many African Americans to the making of America. 

In this unit students explore what it means to curate items to tell a story by creating and presenting visual (portfolio/ film/scrapbook/digital) /audio/ representations of themselves, their family, others, their neighborhood or a place in their neighborhood by identifying, explaining, arranging then presenting the items, stories and artifacts needed to best tell that story. It is our hope that students will begin to understand that they curate their own lives just as much as someone like Daniel Murray or Dorothy Porter Wesley (another Black librarian you will learn about) did in their line of work as librarians. As they learn about these critically important librarians we want them to transfer these skills of analysis to themselves and or the people, places and or institutions around them. To complete this thinking exercise we ask students to both analyze and create curated expressions of their ideas and the curated work of others.

Through these 45-60 minute lesson units, your students will be able to employ historical thinking skills and ask critical questions, including: thinking metacognitively about the ways items carry information, the meanings of symbols, and whether or not we can ever really learn about something or someone if we have not actually known them personally. What does that mean about history? What do you need to accurately represent someone? Something? A time? A place? A family? A nation? Is making those selections easy? Important? Why? What are the limitations of this representation? Is it better to use primary or secondary items? Why? What kinds of questions does this work raise about the history we learn in school? From the media? Is it possible to curate a life? A history? What do we need? Does it matter?

Themes: Identity/identity formation, Subjectivity, Objectivity, History, Memory, Feminism, Gender, Curation, Representation, Self-presentation, Self-image, Photography, Black history, Freedom, Control of Image, Legacy, Curation.

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Background: Biography of Daniel Alexander Payne Murray

“The true test of the progress of a people is to be found in their literature.”

The youngest son of formerly enslaved George Murray who was a preacher and his wife Eliza Murray in Maryland, Daniel Murray was well educated, graduating from the Unitarian Seminary in 1869 where he studied foreign languages. He moved to Washington DC to work with his brother who was a caterer and supervised the popular Senate restaurant in the US Capitol. There Murray caught the attention of two important men, Senator Timothy Howe of Wisconsin, a member of the Joint Library Committee, and Librarian of Congress, Ainsworth Rand Spofford. They hired Murray to fill a small role at the LOC joining Spofford, a staff of eight assistant librarians, one messenger, and three laborers in January 1871. Only members of Congress, high ranking politicians could borrow materials from the LOC library which were delivered to their offices and their homes.

Murray was not the only African American librarian on staff at the LOC. He joined Jon Francis Nicholas Wilkinson, a native Washingtonian two decades Murray’s senior. Wilkinson started working in the Law Library in 1857, and was eventually promoted to Assistant Librarian in 1872. Wilkinson worked in the Law library for fifty-five years. Wilkinson and Murray developed a deep memory of the library and therefore were able to locate books very quickly. When the law library collection reached 80,000 volumes, then Law Librarian George F. Curtis requested funds from Congress for a catalog. He explained that Wilkinson’s “remarkable memory […] for the multitudinous titles of the law books has in part made up for the lack of catalogues.” Wilkinson and Murray earned reputations as the men to call to find anything needed by the politicians as they researched and prepared.

Spofford was the LOC Librarian from 1864-1897 during which time he transformed the LOC to a world class research institution and mentored Murray. Spofford, both an abolitionist and educator from Ohio, trained Murray to help congressmen in their research in history and the study of foreign languages. While employed at the LOC, Spofford was able to promote Murray whose diligence, excellent work and dedication led him to make Murray his full-time personal assistant in 1874 and assistant librarian in 1881.

A Black DC Power Couple

In 1879, Daniel Murray married Anna Evans. An Oberlin graduate, Anna Murray was a trained teacher. She worked at Mott Elementary and Howard University in DC, quickly developing a reputation as a powerful children and women’s rights activist. Anna Murray eventually secured funding from Congress for the first state run Kindergarten program in DC in 1898. The Murray’s were a Black DC power couple. They worked together on a variety of civil rights issues while raising five children, running contracting businesses and being very socially active. In 1894 Daniel Murray drafted a proposal which became the basis of the taxation method to determine the federal support for the municipal government. In recognition of which the Washington DC Board and Trade made Murray its first Black member. (Harris 272)  

In 1897 Murray was given a well deserved promotion to Chief of the Division at the LOC. This was short-lived. White co-workers, empowered by the legality of Jim Crow segregation created the year before by Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896 protested Murray’s promotion. The racism of the white LOC employees who did not want to work with or for a Black man cast a shadow on Murray’s career. In post-Reconstruction America whiteness, not merit mattered. In spite of Spofford’s support, Murray was demoted to his original position and his pay was cut to the original amount he had received as an eighteen-year-old teen and remained at that reduced rate until he retired. 

A Black Bibliography

In 1899, in preparation for the Columbia Exposition in Paris, France, Herbert Putnam, Spofford’s successor charged with Murray “secur(ing)e a copy of every book and pamphlet in existence, by a Negro author” for the Exhibit of Negro Authorship at the 1900 World’s Fair. To make this list, Murray needed books written by Black authors. He had to make decisions about both race and authorship that were contentious. Were biracial people Black? What if authors had no discernibly African/Black features, should they be on the list? He decided to use the popular one-drop law which formed the legal and social basis of American law and practice. In two weeks Murray created one of the first bibliographies of Black authors. The first known compilation of texts by Black authors,  De la littérature des Nègres, was created by Henri Gregoir  in 1808 translated from French and published in 1810 in New York in English. After the exhibition closed, Murray’s collection of volumes were returned to the LOC and formed the foundation of the “Library of Congress Collection of Books by Colored Authors.” 

In 1926, following Murray’s death, the LOC received 1,448 books and pamphlets he had privately assembled to include in his “Historical and Biographical Encyclopedia of the Colored Race;” these were added to the Colored Author Collection. While the Colored Author Collection has been integrated with the Library’s general collections, 184 pamphlets from Murray’s library have been retained as a unit in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division at the LOC. These bound pamphlets were issued between 1850 and 1920 and pertain chiefly to slavery and the abolitionist movement.

The Encyclopedia of the Colored Race

Murray deeply believed that literature would demonstrate the intelligence, depth, complexity, and beauty of Black people and cultures. As a librarian, his greatest contribution to this epic task was to collect, collate, and annotate Black literature. Murray’s greatest work, the “Encyclopedia of the Colored Race” including over 25,000 biographical sketches and over 6,000 titles of black-authored publications was the coda of his career. Before his death Murray approached several printing houses in an effort to get the set published. After his death, his wife Anna Murray tried repeatedly, but printers only agreed to publish the set at Murray’s expense and refused to market the books. The six-volume encyclopedia remains unfinished and unpublished. Anna Murray survived Daniel by several years, dying in their home at 98 years of age in 1955. Murray was a skilled and talented librarian who wanted to make sure all people, especially children, would be able to read about and see themselves in history. Murray proved through his curation that Black people were prodigious writers, poets, essayists and historians at a time when publicly many dismissed Black people not only as illiterate and unintelligent but incapable of producing literature. Though the draft of the encyclopedia is now stored on reels of microfilm in a university library his legacy lives on as the foundation of the LOC holdings which have been reproduced in libraries all over the world. 

“As literature is the highest form of culture and the real test of the standing of a people in the ranks of Civilization, the multitude of works unearthed from previously neglected writers must undoubtedly raise the Negro to a plane previously denied him.” — Daniel Murray,The Colored American, 1900

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Vocabulary

Librarianperson who administers, manages and or assists in a library.
Curate(ion)select the best/most appropriate for display, distribution or presentation.
Encyclopediaset of books with information on many subjects or on many aspects of a subject, arranged alphabetically.
Legacylasting impact of events, actions, from the past and or a person’s life.
Civil Rightsrights of citizens to political, social, and legal equality.
Objectivitylack of favoritism for any side or perspective.
Subjectivityperspective/opinion based on personal tastes, and or opinions.
Jim & Jane Crowsystems and laws which disenfranchised and discriminated against Black men and women, segregation.
Representationsymbol or image that conveys a group’s image, values, history, identity.
Patroncustomer, person or organization who supports a store or organization.
Primary Source: original documents/objects that were created by the person(s).
Advocate: person who publicly supports a cause or issue.
Abolitionist: person who works for the end of an institution, system or practice such as slavery.
Transcribe:write/type/transfer data into a written form.
Library of Congress (LOC)the largest library in the world, with millions of books, films and video, audio recordings, photographs, newspapers, maps and manuscripts. It is the main research arm of the U.S. Congress and houses the U.S. Copyright Office and is our National library.

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Standards

Elementary School:

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.3.7

Use information gained from illustrations (e.g., maps, photographs) and the words in a text to demonstrate understanding of the text (e.g., where, when, why, and how key events occur).

Middle School: 

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.6-8.7

Integrate visual information (e.g., in charts, graphs, photographs, videos, or maps) with other information in print and digital texts.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.WHST.6-8.1.B

Support claim(s) with logical reasoning and relevant, accurate data and evidence that demonstrate an understanding of the topic or text, using credible sources.

High School:

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.11-12.3

Evaluate various explanations for actions or events and determine which explanation best accords with textual evidence, acknowledging where the text leaves matters uncertain.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.11-12.7

Integrate and evaluate multiple sources of information presented in diverse formats and media (e.g., visually, quantitatively, as well as in words) in order to address a question or solve a problem).

Essential Questions

  • What do you need to accurately represent someone? Something? A time? A place? A family? A nation? 
  • Is making those selections easy? Important? Why? 
  • What are the limitations of this kind of representation? 
  • Is it better to use primary or secondary items? Why?
  • What kinds of questions does this work raise about the history we learn in school? From the media?
  • Is it possible to curate a life? A history? What do we need? Does it matter?

Materials and Resources

Elementary Lessons

Day 1 

  1. Introduce students to Douglass Day using the background information included in the unit plan.
  2. Discuss: Why are libraries important? What do libraries provide? What are the differences between public and private libraries? Record student answers digitally or on chart paper for later activities.

Day 2 

  1. Read the included biography of Daniel Murray individually or as a class. 
  2. Students should create a timeline of the important events using visuals or symbols to represent important ideas.
  3. Refer back to responses provided in Day 1. Discuss: Which of the ideas connect to Daniel Murray’s work as a librarian? Why was he important?  

Day 3

  1. Assign students to pairs or groups and launch the design contest for a new Daniel and Anna Murray Memorial Library. 
  2. Students should begin brainstorming by responding to the prompts: Imagine you are a librarian today, what kinds of books would you want your students/patrons/guests to read? Why? Would you even have books? If you did not have books, what would you have? Why? What would your perfect library look like? Discuss.
  3. Teacher should model how to create an annotated bibliography. Each group should discuss the kinds of books they would have at the library. Underneath each item of their list, write a sentence explaining the reason they chose each type/category of book. This is called annotating your list. 

Day 4 

  1. What are some of the things you will need to think about for your library? Answer the questions below with annotations about your library.
    • Where will your library be located?
    • What population will your library serve?
    • What hours will your library open?
    • What programs will your library have?
    • What amenities will your library have?
    • Who will work at your library?
    • How will you organize your library? 

Days 5-6

  1. Students should design and construct their models of their libraries and plan their presentations. 

Day 7 

  1. Students should present their model library plans to the rest of the class or a small jury of community stakeholders.

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Middle School Lessons

Day 1 

  1. Introduce students to Douglass Day using the background information included in the unit plan.
  2. Ask students to participate in an Agree/Disagree/Unsure activity using the following statements:
    1. Libraries are important places in a community.
    2. There are enough resources available to me to learn about Black history. 
    3. Sometimes you have to make sacrifices for your family. 
    4. People should leave a job if they are being treated unfairly.
    5. Your identity makes a difference in how people see you. 
  3. Read the biography of Daniel Murray and ask students to create a six word story of his life. 
  4. Discuss: Why is Daniel Murray an important figure in American history? Why should he be the focus of this year’s Douglass Day?

Day 2 

  1. Explain to students that they will be exploring Daniel Murray through the words of others using a close reading of two primary sources. 
  2. Model close reading for students by reading the excerpt of the letter from librarian Ernestine Rose to Daniel Murray.
  3. As class, generate answers to the Close Reading Questions. 

Day 3 

  1. Review close reading strategy from Day 2.  
  2. Students should read the statement by Joseph Blackburn and respond to the Close Reading Questions individually or in pairs. 
  3. Discuss responses as a class. Compare and contrast: what are the similarities and differences between the two texts in their perspectives of Daniel Murray? How can we explain these similarities and differences? 

Day 4 

  1. Read the Scenario: A Big Decision as a class.
  2. Allow students to discuss their initial reactions in pairs. Next, students should complete the included chart of the pros and cons of leaving the Library of Congress. 
  3. Using the responses in the chart, students should draft a persuasive letter to Daniel Murray advising him of what he should do. 

Day 5 

  1. Students should read their letters in small groups or to the whole class.
  2. Allow groups or the class to vote on the most persuasive letters.
  3. Discuss the responses and the actual outcome. What might have been his reasons for staying? 

Extension Activity: 

Students can complete a research paper or oral presentation about segregation in their city or town in the early 20th century. Students should use 3-5 credible sources to explore the following questions:

  • Did your local government practice Jim Crow? 
  • What choices did African American workers face? 
  • What were the consequences?

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High School Lessons

Curate? Who me? Couldn’t be! 

Day 1

  1. Introduce students to Douglass Day using the background information included in the unit plan.
  2. Allow students time to read the biography of Daniel Murray and generate three key ideas, two connections, and one question about his life. 

Days 2-3 

  1. Share with students: Daniel Murray curated the holdings at the LOC. For the majority of us, who will not become librarians we curate too. We curate our lives every day and participate in other people curating their lives. Social media platforms are exercises of curation. The pictures we post, the filters we use, the reels we make are all carefully chosen by us to show us in a certain light, to tell a particular story. 
  2. Discuss: Think about your accounts, what story are you trying to tell people? Who are you trying to depict? What are the personality traits and values depicted by your online persona? How do you communicate this to your followers?
  3. As individuals or in groups, students should create an Instagram (or other social  account) for Daniel Murray. Note: Teacher may want to model a sample account or create the first post together using digital resources such as a smartboard.
    1. The account must include images, text, quotations, and from 19th century primary sources.
    2. Students must explain the reasons behind their choices 
    3. The feed should have hashtags, follow other historic accounts and clearly depict who Daniel Murray was in the ways that it is organized, what it includes and what it excludes.  

Day 4 

  1. Use a character analysis chart to analyze the social media account of a personality that is working for social, cultural, or political change. Note to teachers: Several are available online; select or create the chart that aligns with the skills/focus of your student or class.
  2. Review students’ findings as a class. What are some themes that emerge? What do you notice about how ideas of gender, race, or age are depicted?

Days 5-7 

Using the chart created on Day 4, allow students time to plan, draft, and polish  Character Analysis Essay for the social media personality they chose.

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College and University Activities

Biography on Dorothy Porter Wesley (1905-1955): Building a System on a Legacy

“The only rewarding thing for me is to bring to light information that no one knows. What’s the point of rehashing the same old thing?”

Dr. Dorothy Porter Wesley is one of the most important librarians in U.S. history. Porter Wesley spent her life transforming the ways libraries identified, categorized, and organized books modifying the stark limits of the prevailing Dewey Decimal System to be more accurate, expansive and responsive. Porter Wesley was born in 1905 in Warrenton, VA, she attended Howard University and Columbia University for graduate school. Porter Wesley moved to Washington DC where she led the Howard University Moorland Library beginning in 1930. 

Portrait by Carl VanVechten 1880-1964 https://howard.emuseum.com/objects/6834/dorothy-porter

Founders Hall Library at Howard University grew into the Moorland Spingarn Research Center. It first opened as one of the Carnegie libraries opened in 1910 with a donation from Andrew Carnegie. In 1914 Kelly Miller (1863-1839) persuaded Jesse Edward Moorland (1863–1940) to donate his private collection of books on Black people in Africa and the United States to the Howard library. Dorothy Porter was tasked with organizing and administering the Moorland collection. The name of the library was changed to the Moorland Foundation in 1933 to reflect his significant contribution. In 1946, the library purchased the collection of Arthur Spingarn. The Spingarn collection made the library at Howard the largest and most comprehensive research library in America dedicated to the study of Black life and history. Under Porter Wesley’s leadership, the library became one of the world’s premier research institutions, becoming the Moorland Spingarn Research Center.  

 “Too much of our heritage, until recently, has been lost because there were not enough collectors among us.” – Dorothy Porter Wesley

Librarians use the Dewey Decimal System to organize the content of their libraries so they and the public can find the books and information they need. The Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) System is a method for organizing items in libraries by subject. The DDC uses numbers, called “call numbers” to group items together by topic. Melvil Dewey created the system in 1873 but published it in 1876. Previously, librarians used their own personal system to organize their collections. The DDC, taught in library schools, offers a standardized, systematic way to manage large numbers of texts well.  The LOC has maintained, developed and disseminated this system to libraries in America and all around the world since 1930.

An Intervention 

A group of Black women librarians had an enviable problem: the breadth and depth of the Black collections that formed the foundation of Howard’s library surpassed the existing Dewey Decimal Classification System. It was too limited to organize or even account for all of the books, papers, pamphlets, newspapers and other items in their collections. These women, Lula V. Allen, Edith Brown, Lula E. Conner, and Rosa Hershaw began to develop a classification scheme to use with the Howard collection. They decided to, “prioritize the scholarly and intellectual significance and coherence of materials that had been marginalized by Eurocentric conceptions of knowledge and knowledge production.”

Dr. Porter Wesley built on the work of her colleagues and transformed the Dewey Decimal System, building what she called the “Black Authors Index.” In her own words, “Dewey’s technology rendered African Americans as either a ‘slave’ or an “immigrant”: “they had one number—326—that meant slavery, and they had one other number—325, as I recall it—that meant colonization. So [in] all the libraries—many of the white libraries, which I visited later—every book, [even] a book of poems by James Weldon Johnson, who everybody knew was a black poet, went under 325.”  But classifying works by genre and author highlighted the foundational role of Black people in all subject areas, namely: art, anthropology, communications, demography, economics, education, geography, history, health, international relations, linguistics, literature, medicine, music, political science, sociology, sports, and religion and placed Black authors alongside white in shared fields. Africana or Black scholarship centers a Black perspective in all fields which inherently combats racist stereotypes and false narratives while celebrating the significant expressions and development of Black self-representation in art and politics. The development of fields of study ranging from Black history, Black literature, African history, Diaspora Studies and much more are directly connected to Porter Wesley’s work. But this work would not have been possible without the very large, diverse and complex holdings of the Moorland Spingarn collections which started with Murray.

Porter Wesley’s paradigm shifting work as a librarian at the Moorland Spingarn Research Center mapped the coordinates and charted the course which challenged subsequent challenges to restricted epistemologies and systems of information which now define anti-colonial discourse. Porter’s classification system challenged racism where it was produced by centering work by and about Black people. This decision produced a set of changes within her library,  scholarly conversations around the world, and subsequently libraries all over.” Are these issues relevant today? As you think about de-colonial discourse, how many times do the conversations acknowledge the epistemologies of not just specific fields but the organization and categorization of data? Daniel Murray and Dorothy Porter Wesley were trailblazers and mavericks in the organization and sharing of information. Their interventions reverberate in and through the work we are able to do today and will do in the future.

Abridged List of Dorothy Porter Wesley’s Titles

  • Afro-American Writings Published Before 1835
  • African and Caribbean Creative Writing
  • Afro-Braziliana
  • American Negro Writers About Africa
  • The Negro in American Cities
  • The Negro in the Brazilian Abolition Movement
  • The Negro in the United States 
  • Early Negro Writing, 1760-1837

Abridged List of Dr. Dorothy Porter Wesley’s Awards

  • The Julius Rosenwald Fellowship for research in Latin American literature (1944)
  • Ford Foundation consultant to the National Library in Lagos, Nigeria (1962-64)
  • Attended the 1st International Congress of Africanists in Accra, Ghana.
  • Ford Foundation study and travel grant which took her to Scotland, Ireland, England and Italy (1973)
  • The Distinguished Alumni Award from Howard University (1974)
  • The Conover-Porter Award was established – the most prestigious award for published works of bibliography or reference on Africa (1980)
  • Fellowship from the W.E.B. DuBois Institute at Harvard University (1989)
  • Moorland-Spingarn Research Center commenced the annual Dorothy Porter Wesley Lecture Series (1989)
  • The National Endowment for the Humanities’ Charles Frankel Award, presented by President Bill Clinton (1994)
  • Honorary Ph.D. degrees from Susquehanna University (1971), Syracuse University (1989), and Radcliffe College (1990)

Question: Choose three academic articles. Considering what you have learned about Murray’s and Porter Wesley’s interventions in bibliography and classification, argue how Black studies as a praxis and theory has or could be applied to current discussions about decolonization and metadata.

Academic Articles

  • Brooks, Joanna. “Working Definitions: Race, Ethnic Studies, and Early American Literature.” Early American Literature, vol. 41, no. 2, 2006, pp. 313–20. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25057448. Accessed 15 Nov. 2024.  
  • Phillips, Glenn O. “The Caribbean Collection at the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University.” Latin American Research Review, vol. 15, no. 2, 1980, pp. 162–78. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2503050. Accessed 15 Nov. 2024.
  • Des Jardins, Julie. “Black Librarians and the Search for Women’s Biography during the New Negro History Movement.” OAH Magazine of History, vol. 20, no. 1, 2006, pp. 15–18. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25162011. Accessed 15 Nov. 2024.
  • Battle, Thomas C. “Moorland-Spingarn Research Center Turns 75.” Washington History, vol. 2, no. 1, 1990, pp. 102–102. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40073101. Accessed 15 Nov. 2024.
  • Madison, Avril Johnson, and Dorothy Porter Wesley. “Dorothy Burnett Porter Wesley: Enterprising Steward of Black Culture.” The Public Historian, vol. 17, no. 1, 1995, pp. 15–40. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/3378349. Accessed 15 Nov. 2024.
  • “Dorothy Burnett Porter Wesley 1905-1995.” The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, no. 43, 2004, pp. 1–1. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4133525. Accessed 15 Nov. 2024.
  • Bourg, Chris. “The Library Is Never Neutral.” Disrupting the Digital Humanities, edited by DOROTHY KIM and JESSE STOMMEL, Punctum Books, 2018, pp. 455–72. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv19cwdqv.29. Accessed 15 Nov. 2024.Bourg, Chris. “The Library Is Never Neutral.” Disrupting the Digital Humanities, edited by DOROTHY KIM and JESSE STOMMEL, Punctum Books, 2018, pp. 455–72. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv19cwdqv.29. Accessed 15 Nov. 2024.
  • Helton, Laura E. “On decimals, catalogs, and racial imaginaries of reading.” PMLA 134.1 (2019): 99-120. Accessed 15 Nov. 2024.

Resources

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Extension Activities

DouglassDay.org is transcribing the Daniel Murray Collection at the Library of Congress. This project is co-presented with the Library of Congress (LOC) and the By The People crowdsourcing platform. 

Activities: 

  1. Review the Library of Congress’s comprehensive lesson plan and resource guide to support transcribing in your classroom.
  2. Learn how to support your students transcribing here “Getting started” presentation (PPT) and here “Quick Tips” instructions hand out (PDF).
  3. Note: These archival documents are written in cursive—a style of penmanship with which students may not be familiar and will therefore need to be prepared to read. The Library of Congress has provided resources for students. Please see below.
  4. Have each student register for an account here prior to beginning transcriptions. 
  5. Allow students to participate in transcriptions for Douglass Day and beyond!

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