Campaigns

• The Man Who Recorded the World: On the Road with Alan Lomax

  

  Launched September 4, 2019 and completed January 15, 2021.
  
  Volunteer transcriptions now enable discovery and access for this collection. Search them.
  
  Discover rich folk traditions from America and the Caribbean by transcribing the notebooks and letters of folklorist Alan Lomax and his collaborators. Lomax had a knack for finding the best performers and coaxing them to record epic stories and songs, many of which are still sung and performed today. These documents serve as the bedrock of our understanding of twentieth-century American and Caribbean folk music.

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• Letters to Lincoln

  

  Launched October 24, 2018 and completed July 9, 2020.
  
  Volunteer transcriptions now enable discovery and access for this collection. Search them.
  
  Abraham Lincoln led a busy life as a laborer, politician, lawyer, father, husband, and the first Republican President. Find out what occupied his mind by transcribing papers sent to him by friends, family, fellow lawyers and politicians, allies and adversaries, as well as his diverse constituents. Most of Lincoln's own papers have been transcribed, but these letters to him have not. Help us get a more complete picture of his life and times.

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• Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers

  

  Launched June 4, 2019 and completed June 15, 2020.
  
  Volunteer transcriptions now enable discovery and access for this collection. Search them. Or download as a dataset.
  
  Like her close collaborator Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906), Elizabeth Cady Stanton is one of the best-known women in American history, principally because of her role in the women's suffrage campaign in the nineteenth century. Although most often identified as a suffragist, Stanton also advocated for women's emancipation and equality in many arenas—political, economic, religious, and social. Transcribing these pages will allow you to explore the long struggle for equality through the diaries, letters, and speeches of the women who fought for the right to vote and changed political history 100 years ago.

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• Susan B. Anthony Papers

  

  Launched June 3, 2019 and completed May 11, 2020.
  
  Volunteer transcriptions now enable discovery and access for this collection. Search them. Or download as a dataset.
  
  With the possible exception of her close collaborator Elizabeth Cady Stanton, no woman is more associated with the campaign for women's voting rights than Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906). Her name became so synonymous with suffrage that the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was called “the Anthony Amendment” for many years by its supporters. Transcribing these pages will allow you to explore the long struggle for equality through the diaries, letters, and speeches of the women who fought for the right to vote and changed political history 100 years ago.

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• Civil War Soldiers: "Disabled but not disheartened"

  

  Launched October 24, 2018 and completed April 14, 2020.
  
  Volunteer transcriptions now enable discovery and access for this collection. Search them. Or download as a dataset.
  
  William Oland Bourne (1819-1901) was a reformer, poet, editor, and clergyman who organized left-hand penmanship competitions for Union soldiers who had lost their right arms during the Civil War.

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• Carrie Chapman Catt Papers

  

  Launched June 3, 2019 and completed April 25, 2020.
  
  Volunteer transcriptions now enable discovery and access for this collection. Search them. Or download as a dataset.
  
  The papers of suffragist, political strategist, and pacifist Carrie Lane Chapman Catt (1859-1947) reflect her steadfast dedication to two major ideals--the rights of women, particularly the right to vote, and world peace. Catt served as president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) from 1900 to 1904, during which time she helped found the International Woman Suffrage Association, and for a second term beginning in 1915. Transcribing these pages will allow you to explore the long struggle for equality through the diaries, letters, and speeches of the women who fought for the right to vote and changed political history 100 years ago.

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• Rosa Parks: In Her Own Words

  

  Launched February 4, 2020 and completed March 21, 2020.
  
  Volunteer transcriptions now enable discovery and access for this collection. Search them. Or download as a dataset.
  
  Rosa Parks is best known for one courageous act on one extraordinary day: she refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger on December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama. This decision launched the Montgomery Bus Boycott and a new phase of the civil rights movement. But it wasn’t the first time she stood up for herself and others, and it wasn’t the last. Hers was a life of activism and service. Help make her words and life accessible to future generations by transcribing letters, writings, and event programs and flyers from the Rosa Parks Papers.

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• "This Hell-upon-earth of a Prison": Samuel J. Gibson's Andersonville Diary

  

  Launched November 6, 2019 and completed November 14, 2019.
  
  Volunteer transcriptions now enable discovery and access for this collection. Search them. Or download as a dataset.
  
  Union soldier Samuel J. Gibson (1833-1878) was a prisoner of war at the notorious Andersonville Prison following his capture by Confederate soldiers in 1864. He survived his eight-month ordeal in the prison camp he described as “this Hell-upon-Earth” and documented his experience in a diary and a letter to his wife.

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• Branch Rickey: Changing the Game

  

  Launched October 24, 2018 and completed February 22, 2019.
  
  Volunteer transcriptions now enable discovery and access for this collection. Search them. Or download as a dataset.
  
  Branch Rickey (1881-1965) helped break the color line in Major League Baseball by recruiting Jackie Robinson to the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. Explore his scouting reports, which document Rickey's skill in analyzing a player's game.

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• Ordinary Lives in George Washington’s Papers

  

  Launched June 30, 2020 and latest addition completed March 17, 2022.
  
  George Washington’s papers are about more than George Washington. Because the first president was a dedicated record-keeper, his papers are also a source of information about the people with whom he lived, worked, and did business. We began investigating the ordinary lives in Washington’s papers with two projects, now completed: Revolutionary War Receipts, 1776-1780 and Interrogations of British Deserters, 1782-1783. Now we are adding a third: the farm reports sent weekly to Washington by his farm managers at Mount Vernon after the war. These record the weather, show Washington engaging with the latest agricultural innovations of his time, and document the lives and labor of the enslaved people at Mount Vernon.

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