February 1, 2022 - Carter G. Woodson

Today, February 1, 2022, we will begin Lyles Station’s celebration of Black History Month by recognizing the man known as the Father of Black History-Carter G. Woodson, the African American historian and author of many historical works including the influential 1933 book The Mis-Education of the Negro.
Woodson, born in 1875 in Virginia, delayed his education to help support his family by working as a sharecropper and as a miner. He was in his late teens when he began high school, completing all four years in only two. He then went on to attend Berea College in Kentucky and then worked for the government overseas before returning to the states to complete his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Chicago. He went on to Harvard where he earned the distinction of being the second African American to earn a doctorate from Harvard, with W.E.B. Dubois being the first.
After finishing his education, Woodson dedicated himself to the field of African American history.
Woodson attended the 50th anniversary of Emancipation in 1915 in Chicago at the Coliseum where exhibits presented the achievements of African Americans since the abolition of slavery. This inspired Woodson who went on to dedicate his life to furthering the knowledge of African American history. One of the first steps he took was to found the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, in 1915. Woodson believed that history belonged to everyone, not just the historians. Woodson also saw that the history of African Americans in American history and other cultures was either misrepresented or completely ignored.
Though Woodson and DuBois were well-educated, they both worried that young African Americans were not aware of the rich history of their own heritage, the achievements of their ancestors. Woodson collaborated with his college fraternity, Omega Psi Phi, to create Negro History and Literature Week in 1924. Woodson saw it as a nice beginning but wanted more, a much larger celebration.
He began by establishing the Journal of Negro History in 1916 and the Negro History Bulletin later in 1937, both publications designed to further the knowledge of African Americans’ role in history. However, in February 1926, Woodson took the first step toward Black History Month. He sent out a press release announcing the Negro History Week, the first celebration of African American history.
February contained the birthdays of both Abraham Lincoln, who signed the Emancipation Proclamation, and Frederick Douglass, noted African American writer and orator and abolitionist. Schools and organization joined the effort to encourage the study of African American history, and the once week long event transformed into what we now know as Black History Month. Woodson’s efforts to preserve the history of African Americans would help “the world see the Negro as a participant rather than a lay figure in history.”
"It is not so much a Negro History Week as it is a History Week. We should emphasize not Negro History, but the Negro in History. What we need is not a history of selected races or nations, but the history of the world void of national bias, race hatred and religious prejudice.”