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Carter G. Woodson (University of Massachusetts DuBois Photos Archive)
His own record of achievement is extraordinary. Born in New Canton, Virginia, on December 19, 1875, to a large family of sharecroppers barely removed from slavery, Woodson as a child worked on the farm run by his father and grandfather and in his teens as a paid laborer for other farmers. He was twenty years old when he started attending Frederick Douglass High School in Fayette County, West Virginia, where his father had moved to work on building the railroad. His constant effort to teach himself, combined with his enormous appetite for education, enabled him to finish school in two years, instead of four.
Woodson graduated from Berea College in Kentucky in 1903 and after teaching for a brief period at his former high school, he traveled to the Philippines to teach and work as a school supervisor for 4 years. Back in the United States, he received an M.A. from the University of Chicago in 1908 and a Ph.D. in history from Harvard in 1912, becoming the second African-American after W. E. B. DuBois to earn the coveted distinction.
Woodson strengthened his teaching career with ten years in the public schools in Washington, D.C. (1909-1919), a year at Howard University as a professor of history and dean of the college of arts and sciences (1919-1920), and two years at the West Virginia Collegiate Institute (1920-1922). He returned to Washington in 1922 to run the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (Association) which he founded in 1915 to research, collect, and disseminate black history.
• Lerone Bennett, Before the Mayflower: A History of Black America (Penguin Books: New York, 1984). An invaluable general history that begins with African antiquity and continues up to the life and times of Martin Luther King, Jr. The select bibliography and list of “black firsts” are useful additions.
• Frederick Douglass, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American slave, written by himself (Penguin Books: New York, 1982). A classic portrait of the dehumanizing nature of slavery and the slave’s determination to escape to freedom. The first and slimmest of Douglass’ three autobiographies, the book is illustrative of the slave narrative genre born out of the experience of new-world slavery.
• W.E.B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches (Chicago: 1903). A collection of essays on black life and culture that reveal DuBois as a scholarly and philosophical genius. This eclectic mix of social commentary, theory, and prose-poetry ranks among the finest works produced by African-Americans.
• John Hope Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom: A History of Negro Americans (Alfred A. Knopf: New York, 1947). A comprehensive history of African-Americans spanning several centuries and continents, this book has long been seen as providing the most reliable assessment of black life in America.
• Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (Washington Square Press: New York, 2003). The first slave narrative by an African-American woman. Using the pseudonym Linda Brent, Jacobs narrates a harrowing tale of sexual exploitation, deprivation, and the eternal quest for freedom.
• Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (Chapel Hill, 1944). An essential reading for anyone interested in the factors that led to the Atlantic Slave Trade. Williams describes in vivid detail the capitalist imperatives underlying the European exploitation of black labor in the new world.
Woodson firmly believed in the power of history to combat racial prejudice and throughout his life he worked tirelessly to ensure that black history was not obscured or misrepresented. His Journal of Negro History (1915) and later the Negro History Bulletin (1937) became the publishing vehicles for achieving these objectives. He wrote frequently for the Journal and authored numerous books, most notably, "The Mis-Education of the Negro" (1933), "A Century of Negro Migration" (1918), "The Negro in Our History" (1922), and "The African Background Outlined" (1936).
Another significant platform for Woodson came when he established Negro History Week, marking the second week of the month for the celebration of black history, along with the birthdays of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln. Aligned with the ideals of the Association, the week-long event was a dramatic example of Woodson’s effort to galvanize national opinion around the central importance of African-American history.
The reform-minded educator urged social organizations, colleges, schools, and newspapers to join in the celebration, offering suggestions about programs and events to cater to different audiences. In an era marked startlingly by racial difference and violence, Woodson sought to promote both racial understanding and a higher sense of responsibility among blacks and whites in tackling the nation’s simplistic racial order.
By the time of his death on April 3, 1950, “the father of Negro history,” as Woodson is known, had succeeded in making the historical record of Black Americans an important insertion into the minds of many Americans.
Tuzyline Jita Allan is a professor of English at Baruch College, CUNY. She holds B.A. (Honors), M.A., and Ph.D. degrees in English, with a specialization in African-American and postcolonial literatures, feminist theory and criticism, and Modernism.
