Carter G. Woodson
Carter Godwin Woodson was the son of formerly enslaved parents in New Canton, Virginia. He worked in coal mines as a young man and didn't enter high school until age 20, but his intellectual hunger was insatiable. He went on to become the second African American (after W.E.B. Du Bois) to earn a doctorate from Harvard.
Woodson was appalled that Black people were almost entirely absent from American history books. In 1915, he founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, and in 1926 he established Negro History Week — choosing the second week of February to coincide with the birthdays of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln.
Through decades of research, publishing, and advocacy, Woodson built the infrastructure for Black history as an academic discipline. His work ensured that the achievements and experiences of African Americans would be studied, celebrated, and preserved. Negro History Week was expanded to Black History Month in 1976.
"If a race has no history, it has no worthwhile tradition, it becomes a negligible factor in the thought of the world."— Carter G. Woodson
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