On January 24, 2024, approximately thirty volunteers convened in the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem for what one of them called a “nerd party.”
The occasion, which was formally named “Transcribe-a-thon: Remaking the World of Arturo Schomburg,” planned to transcribe a few of the historian’s correspondence and fell on the 150th anniversary of his birth.
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“Every year I mark his birthday,” stated one of the Schomburg Center’s volunteers, Vanessa K. Valdés. “So, I’m so incredibly honored to be part of a crowd of people who are celebrating him.”
Born in Puerto Rico in 1874, Arturo Schomburg is credited with being one of the pioneers of the academic field known as Black studies.
“There would be no field of Black studies had it not been for these earlier generations who built the collections, saved the materials, documented what was going on,” stated Laura Helton, one of the event’s co-organizers and an assistant professor of history and English at the University of Delaware.
On the day of the event, the volunteers’ primary task was to transcribe letters that Schomburg sent to other notable figures such as French novelist René Maran, philosopher Alain Locke, and cartoonist Albert Smith.
According to Helton, they concentrated on the years 1925–1931 since they showed how Schomburg and other individuals were “invested in the idea that saving, preserving and building the Black history was urgent work.”
A computerized compilation of all the Schomburg documents kept at the Center and at Fisk University in Nashville, where Schomburg served as a visiting curator in the 1930s, was the ultimate aim of the transcribe-a-thon. According to Helton, Schomburg’s collection will someday be digitized and made available online so that readers won’t have to go from library to library to read them.
People clustered around tables, tapping away at laptops, while Schomburg Center employees helped individuals who needed assistance understanding a word or letter on a specific page.
Volunteer Monica White stated that transcription of the articles became simpler with time as she began to notice patterns and context hints.
“You’ll see the pattern in the handwriting then start to say, ‘OK, this is how he makes his T’s and I’s,’” she remarked.
But why expect people to transcribe the texts when computers can accomplish nearly everything these days? Is a question that may lurk in many minds.
Helton stated that despite their sophisticated nature, document scanners are unable to interpret comments, scribbles, or cursive writing.
“The computer can’t make out what the human eye can make out in these documents,” she explained.
According to White, she volunteered to support historical preservation.
“I feel like I’m part of that legacy so that people coming after will have the information that previous researchers have not had,” she noted.
According to Valdés, she identifies as a Schomburg “stan.” “Diasporic Blackness: The Life and Times of Arturo Alfonso Schomburg” is the title of the book she authored capturing his life, work, and philosophy.
In light of recent school district bans on Black authors’ works and curtailments on teaching about the nation’s historical treatment of Black people, she described the transcribe-a-thon as a “political stance.”
Valdés described the experience as “Fun” and “wonderful to be a part of this and it’s community building.” She also added, “But it is also very much to say we are here and you cannot ignore us.”
