Carter G. Woodson
Carter Godwin Woodson was an American historian, author, journalist, and the founder of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History. He was one of the first scholars to study the history of the Black African diaspora in the United States. A founder of The Journal of Negro History in 1916, Woodson has been called the "father of Black history." In February 1926, he launched the celebration of "Negro History Week," the precursor of Black History Month. Woodson was an important figure to the movement of Afrocentrism, due to his perspective of placing people of Sub-Saharan African descent at the center of the study of history and the human experience.
Born in Virginia, the son of former slaves, Woodson had to put off schooling while he worked in the coal mines of West Virginia. He graduated from Berea College, and became a teacher and school administrator. Earning graduate degrees at the University of Chicago, Woodson then became the second African American, after W. E. B. Du Bois, to obtain a PhD degree from Harvard University. Woodson is the only person whose parents were enslaved in the United States to obtain a PhD in history. Largely excluded from the uniformly-white academic history profession, Woodson realized the need to make the structures which support scholarship in black history, and black historians. He taught at Howard University and West Virginia State University, both historically black colleges, but spent most of his career in Washington, D.C., managing the ASALH, public speaking, writing, and publishing.
Early life and education
Carter G. Woodson was born in New Canton, Virginia, on December 19, 1875, the son of former slaves Anne Eliza and James Henry Woodson. Although his father was illiterate, Carter's mother, Anna, had been taught to read by her mistress. His father, James, during the Civil War, had helped Union soldiers near Richmond, after escaping from his owner, by leading them to Confederate supply stations and warehouses to raid army supplies. Thereafter, and until the war ended, James had scouted for the Union Army. In 1867, Anna and James married, and later moved to West Virginia after buying a small farm. The Woodson family was extremely poor, but proud. Both Woodson's parents told him that it was the happiest day of their lives when they became free. His sister was the poet, teacher, and activist Bessie Woodson Yancey. Woodson was often unable to attend primary school regularly so as to help out on the farm. Through a mixture of self-instruction and four months of instruction from his two uncles, brothers of his mother who were also taught to read, Woodson was able to master most school subjects.At the age of seventeen, Woodson followed his older brother Robert Henry to Huntington, West Virginia, where he hoped to attend Douglass High School, a secondary school for African Americans founded there. Woodson worked in the coal mines near the New River in southern West Virginia, which left little time for pursuing an education. At the age of twenty in 1895, Woodson was finally able to enter Douglass High School full-time and received his diploma in 1897. From his graduation in 1897 until 1900, Woodson was employed as a teacher at a school in Winona, West Virginia. His career advanced further in 1900 when he became the principal of Douglass High School, the place where he had started his academic career. Between 1901 and 1903, Woodson took classes at Berea College in Kentucky, eventually earning his bachelor's degree in literature in 1903. From 1903 to 1907, Woodson served as a school supervisor in the Philippines, which had recently become an American territory.
Woodson later attended the University of Chicago, where he was awarded an A.B. and A.M. in 1908. He was a member of the first Black professional fraternity Sigma Pi Phi and a member of Omega Psi Phi. Woodson's M.A thesis was titled "The German Policy of France in the War of Austrian Succession." He completed his PhD in history at Harvard University in 1912, where he was the second African American to earn a doctorate. His doctoral dissertation, The Disruption of Virginia, was based on research he did at the Library of Congress while teaching high school in Washington, D.C. During his research, Woodson came into conflict with his supervisors, causing professor of history, Frederick Jackson Turner, to intervene on Woodson's behalf. Woodson's dissertation advisor was Albert Bushnell Hart, who had also been the advisor for Du Bois, with Edward Channing and Charles Haskins also on the committee.
After earning his doctoral degree, he continued teaching, though racism from the mainstream elite institutions of the time meant he taught at other places. An early senior position was as principal of the all-Black Armstrong Manual Training School in Washington D.C. He later joined the faculty at Howard University as a professor, and served there as Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.
Woodson felt that the American Historical Association had no interest in Black history, noting that although he was a dues-paying member of the AHA, he was not allowed to attend AHA conferences. Woodson became convinced he had no future in the white-dominated historical profession, and to work as a Black historian would require creating an institutional structure that would make it possible for Black scholars to study history. Because Woodson lacked the funds to finance such a new institutional structure himself, he turned to philanthropist institutions such as the Carnegie Foundation, the Julius Rosenwald Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation.
Career
Convinced that the role of his own people in American history and in the history of other cultures was being ignored or misrepresented among scholars, Woodson realized the need for research into the neglected past of African Americans. Along with William D. Hartgrove, George Cleveland Hall, Alexander L. Jackson, and James E. Stamps, he founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History on September 9, 1915, in Chicago. Woodson's purpose was "to treat the records scientifically and to publish the findings of the world" in order to avoid "the awful fate of becoming a negligible factor in the thought of the world." His stays at the Wabash Avenue YMCA in Chicago and in the surrounding Bronzeville neighborhood, including 1915's Lincoln Jubilee, inspired him to create the ASLNH. Another inspiration was John Wesley Cromwell's 1914 book, The Negro in American History: Men and Women Eminent in the Evolution of the American of African Descent.Woodson believed that education and increasing social and professional contacts among Black and white people could reduce racism, and he promoted the organized study of African-American history partly for that purpose. He would later promote the first Negro History Week in Washington, D.C., in 1926, forerunner of Black History Month. The Association ran conferences, published The Journal of Negro History, and "particularly targeted those responsible for the education of black children."
In January 1916, Woodson began publication of the scholarly Journal of Negro History. It has never missed an issue, despite the Great Depression, loss of support from foundations, and two World Wars. In 2002, it was renamed the Journal of African American History and continues to be published by the Association for the Study of African American Life and History. Woodson published The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861. His other books followed: A Century of Negro Migration and The History of the Negro Church. His work The Negro in Our History has been reprinted in numerous editions and was revised by Charles H. Wesley after Woodson's death in 1950. Woodson described the purpose of the ASNLH as the "scientific study" of the "neglected aspects of Negro life and history" by training a new generation of Black people in historical research and methodology. Believing that history belonged to everybody, not just the historians, Woodson sought to engage Black civic leaders, high school teachers, clergymen, women's groups and fraternal associations in his project to improve the understanding of African-American history.
He served as Academic Dean of the West Virginia Collegiate Institute, now West Virginia State University, from 1920 to 1922. By 1922, Woodson's experience of academic politics and intrigue had left him so disenchanted with university life that he vowed never to work in academia again. He continued to write publish and lecture nationwide. He studied many aspects of African-American history. For instance, in 1924, he published the first study of free Black slave owners of 1830, in the United States.
NAACP
Woodson became affiliated with the Washington, D.C., branch of the NAACP and its chairman Archibald Grimké. On January 28, 1915, Woodson wrote a letter to Grimké expressing his dissatisfaction with activities and making two proposals:- That the branch secure an office for a center to which persons may report whatever concerns the Black race may have, and from which the Association may extend its operations into every part of the city; and
- That a canvasser be appointed to enlist members and obtain subscriptions for The Crisis, the NAACP magazine edited by W. E. B. Du Bois.
Responding to Grimké's comments about his proposals, on March 18, 1915, Woodson wrote:
I am not afraid of being sued by white businessmen. In fact, I should welcome such a law suit. It would do the cause much good. Let us banish fear. We have been in this mental state for three centuries. I am a radical. I am ready to act, if I can find brave men to help me.
His difference of opinion with Grimké, who wanted a more conservative course, contributed to Woodson's ending his affiliation with the NAACP.