WOODSON, DR. CARTER GODWIN (19 December 1875–3 April 1950), African American historian, author, journalist, and scholar dedicated to the celebration, commemoration, and historical memory and contribution of Black people. Woodson’s work led to the establishment of Black History Month in 1976, now marked in America every February. Woodson was born to illiterate parents who were former slaves. As a young boy, he earned income for his family by working in the coal mines of West Virginia. Woodson’s formal schooling was thus irregular, and he was largely self- taught. Nonetheless, by seventeen, he had mastered the common school subjects. He entered high school at age twenty and completed his diploma in less than two years. Before obtaining a Bachelor of Literature degree from Berea College in Kentucky, Woodson worked as a teacher and principal. Afterwards, he served as a school supervisor in the Philippines, which had recently become an American territory. Woodson later attended the University of Chicago, where he earned both a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in 1908. He completed his PhD in History at Harvard University in 1912, becoming the second Black American after W.E.B. Du Bois to earn a doctorate. Woodson later joined the faculty at Howard University as a full professor, and he also served there as the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.
Although Woodson was a dues-paying member of the American Historical Association (AHA), he was not allowed to attend its conferences. Ultimately, working as a Black historian in a White-dominated profession, Woodson felt that there would need to be a radical change in the institutional structure of the profession in order to make it possible for Black scholars such as himself to study history. Without the funding or support of the AHA to fall back on, Woodson turned to philanthropic organizations such as the Carnegie Foundation, the Julius Rosenwald Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation. With their support, Woodson founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (ASNLH) in 1915 in Chicago. Its mission was to study the “neglected aspects of Negro life and history.” The next year he began publication of a scholarly journal, the Journal of Negro History, which still occupies a prominent position in scholarship and pub- lishes under the name Journal of African American History today. Woodson believed in Black self-reliance and racial respect, and he regularly contributed to Marcus Garvey’s Negro World as a columnist. Woodson’s devotion and dedication to the identification, circulation, and amplification of the contributions of Black Americans resulted in the inauguration of Negro History Week in the second week of February in 1926. The date was chosen to coincide with the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. This concept was later expanded to Black History Month. Woodson died of a heart attack at the age of seventy-four, but his legacy lives on in his significant impact on the development of more just social, political, economic, and institutional structures. Woodson was a fervent believer that Black people should be proud of their heritage and that all Americans should know and understand the largely forgotten and neglected achievements—the “lost history”—of Black Americans.