Carter G. Woodson

His mother had been taught to read by the woman who owned her, and she taught him. That was most of his schooling. Carter Godwin Woodson was born in New Canton, Virginia, in 1875, the fourth of nine children of parents who had been enslaved, and by his teens he was in the New River coalfields of West Virginia, cutting coal and reading on his own time. He entered Frederick Douglass High School in Huntington at 20 and had the diploma two years later. Berea College followed, then four years supervising schools in the Philippines, then Chicago. In 1912 Harvard gave him a doctorate in history — the second one an African American had taken there, after W. E. B. Du Bois.

On September 9, 1915, in Chicago, Woodson and four others founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History. In January 1916 he began the Journal of Negro History and edited it for more than 30 years. In February 1926 he launched Negro History Week, set in the week that held the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, and it became Black History Month in 1976. The week is what gets remembered, but he was building an apparatus — journal, association, press, bulletin, curriculum — and the week was only its front door.

The Mis-Education of the Negro (1933) is quoted more than it is read, and the argument is harder than its reputation. Woodson wrote that a school system built on other people's assumptions trains Black Americans to accept a subordinate place so thoroughly that no one has to enforce it — the graduate finds the back door himself. The remedy was not access to the curriculum but control of it. He never married. He bought a house in Washington in 1922, put the Association on the first floor and himself on the third, and fed his own salary into it. White philanthropists who wanted a hand in the work were pushed out, two board members quitting in protest in 1920. Black scholars who thought his subject belonged inside American history rather than beside it kept it out of their curricula.

He died on April 3, 1950, of a heart attack, in the office on the first floor of his own house, with the Encyclopedia Africana he had planned in six volumes unfinished. The house is now the Carter G. Woodson Home National Historic Site. The Association still runs, the journal still publishes, and the week he set in February has been the whole month since 1976, observed by every president, printed on every school calendar. What the observance has become is the live argument. Teachers, historians and his own successors ask each February whether a month of assemblies and posters is the institution he built or the substitute for it that he spent his life warning against.

Carter G. Woodson's life against the full span of the corpus.

• The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861 book
  His first book, grown out of the Harvard research 1915
• Association for the Study of Negro Life and History other
  Founded in Chicago and still running as the ASALH 1915
• The Journal of Negro History other
  He edited it for 34 years and it never missed an issue 1916
• A Century of Negro Migration book
  An early study of Black movement out of the South 1918
• Negro History Week other
  Expanded to Black History Month, presidentially proclaimed since 1976 1926
• The Mis-Education of the Negro book
  His most quoted book and his hardest argument 1933

• December 19, 1875 aged 0 Born in New Canton, Virginia, to parents who had been enslaved The fourth of nine children. His mother had been taught to read by the woman who owned her.
• 1895 aged ~20 Enters Douglass High School in Huntington at 20, after years in the coal mines Largely self-taught already, he took the diploma in 1897 and was the school's principal by 1900.
• 1903 aged ~28 Takes a degree from Berea College and leaves for the Philippines He supervised schools in the new American territory until 1907.
• 1912 aged ~37 Earns a doctorate in history at Harvard The second African American to take a Harvard PhD, after W. E. B. Du Bois.
• September 9, 1915 aged 39 Founds the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History in Chicago With William D. Hartgrove, George Cleveland Hall, Alexander L. Jackson and James E. Stamps.
• January 1916 aged 40 Publishes the first issue of the Journal of Negro History It has not missed an issue since, through two world wars and the Depression.
• July 18, 1922 aged 46 Buys the house at 1538 Ninth Street NW in Washington The Association took the first floor. He lived on the third.
• February 1926 aged 50 Launches the first Negro History Week Set in the week holding the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. The NAACP gave him the Spingarn Medal the same year.
• April 3, 1950 aged 74 Dies of a heart attack in the office inside his own house The six-volume Encyclopedia Africana he most wanted to finish was unfinished.

• W.E.B. Du Bois 1868–1963
  Sociologist, historian, and civil rights activist who was the first African American to earn a Harvard doctorate. followed at Harvard
• Frederick Douglass 1818–1895
  Former slave who became a leading abolitionist, orator, and advocate for equal rights. built the week around
• Mary McLeod Bethune 1875–1955
  Educator and civil rights leader who founded Bethune-Cookman University and advised four presidents. led his association
• Booker T. Washington 1856–1915
  Educator and founder of Tuskegee Institute who advocated for vocational training for African Americans. critiqued
• Zora Neale Hurston 1891–1960
  Novelist and folklorist whose work preserved Black Southern speech and culture and became central to the American canon. funded her fieldwork