Biography of Carter G. Woodson, Black Historian

Biography of Carter G. Woodson, Black Historian Carter G. Woodson (December 19, 1875–April 3, 1950) is known  as the father of black history and black studies. He worked tirelessly to establish the field of African-American history in the early 1900s, founding the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History and its journal. This son of two former slaves, he rose from modest origins to become the respected and groundbreaking historian who founded Negro History Week, today known as Black History Month. Fast Facts: Carter Woodson Known For: Known as the father of black history, Woodson founded Negro History Week, upon which Black History Month is foundedBorn: December 19, 1875 in New Canton, VirginiaParents: Anne Eliza Riddle Woodson and James Henry WoodsonDied: April 3, 1950 in Washington, D.C.Education: B.A. and M.A., University of Chicago. Ph.D., Harvard UniversityPublished Works:  The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861, A Century of Negro Migration, The History of the Negro Church, The Negro in Our HistoryAwards and Honors: 1926 NAACP Spingarn Medal, 1984 U.S. Postal Service 20 cent stamp honoring WoodsonNotable Quote: Those who have no record of what their forebears have accomplished lose the inspiration which comes from the teaching of biography and history. Early Life Woodsons parents owned a 10-acre tobacco farm near the James River in Virginia and their children had to spend most of their days doing farm work to help the family survive. This wasnt an unusual situation for farm families in late 19th-century America, but it did mean that young Woodson had little time to pursue his studies. Two of his uncles ran a schoolroom that met five months out of the year, and Woodson attended when he could. He learned to read using the Bible and his fathers newspapers in the evening. As a teenager, he went to work in the coal mines. During his free time, Woodson continued his education on his own, reading the writings of Roman philosopher Cicero and the Roman poet Virgil. Education When he was 20 years old, Woodson enrolled at Frederick Douglass High School in West Virginia, where his family then lived. He graduated in a year and went on to Berea College in Kentucky and Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. While he was still in college, he became an educator, teaching high school and serving as a principal. After his college graduation in 1903, Woodson spent time teaching in the Philippines and also traveled, visiting the Middle East and Europe. When he returned to the U.S., he enrolled at the University of Chicago and received both his bachelors and masters degrees in the spring of 1908. That fall, he became a doctoral student in history at Harvard University. The Founder of Black History Woodson was not the first African-American to earn a Ph.D. in history from Harvard; that distinction went to W.E.B. Du Bois. But when Woodson graduated in 1912, he embarked on the project of making the history of black Americans both visible and respected. Contemporary conventional historians were white and had a very narrow scope in their historical narratives; one of Woodsons professors at Harvard, Edward Channing, asserted that the negro had no history. Channing was not alone in this sentiment, and U.S. history textbooks and coursework emphasized political history, which covered the history of the white middle-class and affluent men. Woodsons first book was on the history of African-American education titled,  The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861, published in 1915. In his preface, he emphasized the importance and power of the African-American story: [T]he accounts of the successful strivings of Negroes for enlightenment under most adverse circumstances read like beautiful romances of a people in an heroic age. The same year that his first book came out, Woodson took the important step of creating an organization to promote the study of African-American history and culture. It was called the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (ASNLH). He founded it with four other African-American men; they agreed to the project during a meeting at the YMCA and envisioned an association that would promote publishing in the field but also racial harmony by improving historical knowledge. The association had an accompanying journal that still exists today, The Journal of Negro History, which began in 1916. In 1920, Woodson became dean of the School of Liberal Arts at Howard University, and it was there that he created a formal African-American history survey course. That same year, he founded Associated Negro Publishers to promote African-American publishing. From Howard, he went on to West Virginia State, but in 1922 he retired from teaching and devoted himself entirely to scholarship. Woodson moved to Washington, D.C., and erected the permanent headquarters for the ASNLH. Woodson also continued to publish works such as  A Century of Negro Migration (1918), The History of the Negro Church (1921), and The Negro in Our History (1922). Negro History Week If Woodson had stopped there, he still would be remembered for helping to usher in the field of African-American history. But he wanted to spread knowledge of this history to black students of all ages. In 1926, he hit upon an idea- a week purely devoted to the celebration of the achievements of African-Americans. Negro History Week, the progenitor of todays Black History Month, began the week of Feb. 7, 1926. The week included the birthdays of both Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. Black educators, with Woodsons encouragement, rapidly adopted the week-long study of African-American history. Later Life and Death Woodson spent the rest of his life studying, writing about, and promoting black history. He fought to keep African-American history alive at a time when most white historians were actively hostile to the idea. He kept the ASNLH and its journal going, even when funding was scarce. Woodson died at his home in Washington, D.C., at the age of 74 on April 3, 1950. He is buried at Lincoln Memorial Cemetery in  Maryland. Legacy Woodson did not live to see Brown v. Board of Education, which made segregation in schools illegal, nor did he live to see the creation of Black History Month in 1976. But his brainchild, Negro History Week, is the direct predecessor of this significant educational advance. His efforts to highlight the achievements of African-Americans gave to the civil rights generation a deep appreciation of the heroes who had preceded them and in whose footsteps they were following. The achievements of African-Americans like Crispus Attucks and Harriet Tubman  are part of the standard U.S. history narrative today, thanks to Carter G. Woodson. Sources Baldwin, Neil. The American Revelation: Ten Ideals That Shaped Our Country from the Puritans to the Cold War. Macmillan, 2006.Carter G. Woodson: Father of Black History. Ebony. vol. 59, no. 4, February 2004. pp. 20, 108-110.Dagbovie, Pero Gaglo. The Early Black History Movement, Carter G. Woodson, and Lorenzo Johnston Greene. The University of Illinois Press, 2007.Woodson, Carter G. The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861. G.P. Putnams sons, 1915.