"If the white man wants to hold on to it, let him do so; but the Negro, so far as he is able, should develop and carry out a program of his own." -- Carter G. Woodson
Carter Godwin Woodson (December 19, 1875 - April 3, 1950) was an African-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 value and study Black History. He recognized and acted upon the importance of a people having an awareness and knowledge of their contributions to humanity and left behind an impressive legacy. A founder of Journal of Negro History, Dr. Woodson is known as the Father of Black History.
"And thus goes segregation which is the most far-reaching development in the history of the Negro since the enslavement of the race.""As another has well said, to handicap a student by teaching him that his black face is a curse and that his struggle to change his condition is hopeless is the worst sort of lynching.""Even schools for Negroes, then, are places where they must be convinced of their inferiority.""I am a radical.""I am not afraid of being sued by white businessmen. In fact, I should welcome such a law suit.""I am ready to act, if I can find brave men to help me.""If a race has no history, if it has no worthwhile tradition, it becomes a negligible factor in the thought of the world, and it stands in danger of being exterminated.""If Liberia has failed, then, it is no evidence of the failure of the Negro in government. It is merely evidence of the failure of slavery.""If the Negro in the ghetto must eternally be fed by the hand that pushes him into the ghetto, he will never become strong enough to get out of the ghetto.""If the Negroes are to remain forever removed from the producing atmosphere, and the present discrimination continues, there will be nothing left for them to do.""In fact, the confidence of the people is worth more than money.""In our so-called democracy we are accustomed to give the majority what they want rather than educate them to understand what is best for them.""In the long run, there is not much discrimination against superior talent.""Let us banish fear.""Negro banks, as a rule, have failed because the people, taught that their own pioneers in business cannot function in this sphere, withdrew their deposits.""Negroes who have been so long inconvenienced and denied opportunities for development are naturally afraid of anything that sounds like discrimination.""One can cite cases of Negroes who opposed emancipation and denounced the abolitionists.""Our most widely known scholars have been trained in universities outside of the South.""The author takes the position that the consumer pays the tax, and as such every individual of the social order should be given unlimited opportunity to make the most of himself.""The different ness of races, moreover, is no evidence of superiority or of inferiority. This merely indicates that each race has certain gifts which the others do not possess.""The large majority of the Negroes who have put on the finishing touches of our best colleges are all but worthless in the development of their people.""The mere imparting of information is not education.""The Negroes are facing the alternative of rising in the sphere of production to supply their proportion of the manufacturers and merchants or of going down to the graves of paupers.""The so-called modern education, with all its defects, however, does others so much more good than it does the Negro, because it has been worked out in conformity to the needs of those who have enslaved and oppressed weaker peoples.""The strongest bank in the United States will last only so long as the people will have sufficient confidence in it to keep their money there.""The thought of' the inferiority of the Negro is drilled into him in almost every class he enters and in almost every book he studies.""They still have some money, and they have needs to supply. They must begin immediately to pool their earnings and organize industries to participate in supplying social and economic demands.""This assumption of Negro leadership in the ghetto, then, must not be confined to matters of religion, education, and social uplift; it must deal with such fundamental forces in life as make these things possible.""This crusade is much more important than the anti- lynching movement, because there would be no lynching if it did not start in the schoolroom.""Those who have no record of what their forebears have accomplished lose the inspiration which comes from the teaching of biography and history.""We do not show the Negro how to overcome segregation, but we teach him how to accept it as final and just.""When you control a man's thinking you do not have to worry about his actions."
He was born December 19, 1875, in New Canton, Virginia, the son of former slaves James and Elizae Riddle Woodson. His father helped Union soldiers during the Civil War, and he moved his family to West Virginia when he heard that Huntington was building a high school for blacks. Coming from a large, poor family, Carter Woodson could not regularly attend school. Through self-instruction, Woodson mastered the fundamentals of common school subjects by age 17.
Wanting more education, Carter went to Fayette County to earn a living as a miner in the coal fields. He was able to devote only a few months each year to his schooling. In 1895, at age 20, Woodson entered Douglass High School where he received his diploma in less than two years. From 1897 to 1900, Woodson taught in Fayette County. In 1900 he was selected as the principal of Douglass High School. He earned his Bachelor of Literature degree from Berea College in Kentucky.
From 1903 to 1907 Woodson was a school supervisor in the Philippines. Later, he attended the University of Chicago, where he was awarded an M.A. in 1908. He was a member of the first black fraternity Sigma Pi Phi and a member of Omega Psi Phi. 1904-2004: the Boule at 100: Sigma Pi Phi Fraternity holds centennial celebration | Ebony | Find Articles at BNET.com. He completed his Ph.D. in history at Harvard University in 1912, where he was only the second African-American (after W.E.B. DuBois) 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. After earning the doctoral degree, he continued teaching in the public schools, later joining the faculty at Howard University as a professor and served as Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.Convinced that the role of his own people in American history and in the history of other cultures was either being ignored or misrepresented among scholars, Woodson realized the need for research into the neglected past of African Americans. Along with Alexander L. Jackson and three associates, he founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History September 9, 1915, in Chicago. African American Registry - Your Source for African American History That was also the year Woodson published The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861. His other books followed: A Century of Negro Migration] (1918) and The History of the Negro Church (1927). 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.
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 (ASALH).
Woodson became affiliated with the Washington, D.C. branch of the NAACP, and its Chairman Archibald Grimké. On January 28, 1915, he wrote a letter to Grimké expressing his dissatisfaction with the way things were going. Woodson made 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.
W. E. B. Du Bois added the daring proposal of "diverting patronage from business establishments which do not treat races alike." He wrote that he would cooperate as one of the twenty-five effective canvassers, adding that he would pay the office rent for one month. The NAACP did not welcome Dr. Woodson's ideas.
In a letter to Grimké on March 18, 1915, responding to comments about his proposals, 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."
This difference of opinion with Grimké contributed to Woodson's ending his affiliation with the NAACP.
After leaving Howard University because of differences with its president, Dr. Woodson devoted the rest of his life to historical research. He worked to preserve the history of African Americans and accumulated a collection of thousands of artifacts and publications. He noted that African American contributions "were overlooked, ignored, and even suppressed by the writers of history textbooks and the teachers who use them." Race prejudice, he concluded, "is merely the logical result of tradition, the inevitable outcome of thorough instruction to the effect that the Negro has never contributed anything to the progress of mankind."In 1926, Woodson single-handedly pioneered the celebration of "Negro History Week", for the second week in February, to coincide with marking the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass.. The week was later extended to the full month of February and renamed Black History Month.
Woodson believed in self-reliance and racial respect, values he shared with Marcus Garvey. Woodson became a regular columnist for Garvey's weekly Negro World.
Woodson's political activism placed him at the center of a circle of many black intellectuals and activists from the 1920s to the 1940s. He corresponded with W. E. B. Du Bois, John E. Bruce, Arturo Alfonso Schomburg, Hubert H. Harrison, and T. Thomas Fortune among others. Even with the extended duties of the Association, Woodson made time to write academic works such as The History of the Negro Church (1922), The Mis-Education of the Negro (1933), and others which continue to have wide readership.
Woodson did not shy away from controversial subjects, and used the pages of Negro World to contribute to debates. One issue related to West Indian/African American relations. Woodson summarized that "the West Indian Negro is free." He observed that West Indian societies had been more successful at properly dedicating the necessary amounts of time and resources needed to educate and genuinely emancipate people. Woodson approved of efforts by West Indians to include materials related to Black history and culture into their school curricula.
Woodson was ostracized by some of his contemporaries because of his insistence on defining a category of history related to ethnic culture and race. At the time, these educators felt that it was wrong to teach or understand African-American history as separate from more general American history. According to these educators, "Negroes" were simply Americans, darker skinned, but with no history apart from that of any other. Thus Woodson's efforts to get Black culture and history into the curricula of institutions, even historically Black colleges, were often unsuccessful. Today the United States celebrates the Black History Month.
That schools have set aside a time each year, to focus upon African American history, is Dr. Woodson's most visible legacy. His determination to further the recognition of the Negro in American and world history, however, inspired countless other scholars. Woodson remained focused on his work throughout his life. Many see him as a man of vision and understanding. Although Dr. Woodson was among the ranks of the educated few, he did not feel particularly sentimental about elite educational institutions. The Association and journal which he started in 1915 continue, and both have earned intellectual respect.
Woodson's other far-reaching activities included the founding in 1920 of the Associated Publishers, the oldest African-American publishing company in the United States. This enabled publication of books concerning blacks which may not have been supported in the rest of the market. He founded Negro History Week in 1926 (now known as Black History Month). He created the Negro History Bulletin, developed for teachers in elementary and high school grades, and published continuously since 1937. Woodson also influenced the Association's direction and subsidizing of research in African-American history. He wrote numerous articles, monographs and books on Blacks. The Negro in Our History reached its eleventh edition in 1966, when it had sold more than 90,000 copies.
Dorothy Porter Wesley stated that "Woodson would wrap up his publications, take them to the post office and have dinner at the YMCA." He would teasingly decline her dinner invitations saying, "No, you are trying to marry me off. I am married to my work". Dr. Woodson's most cherished ambition, a six-volume Encyclopedia Africana, lay incomplete at his death on April 3, 1950 at the age of 74. He is buried at Lincoln Memorial Cemetery in Suitland-Silver Hill, Maryland.
In 1992, the Library of Congress held an exhibition entitled "Moving Back Barriers: The Legacy of Carter G. Woodson". Woodson had donated his collection of 5,000 items from the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries to the Library.
His Washington, D.C. home has been preserved and designated the Carter G. Woodson Home National Historic Site.
In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante named Carter G. Woodson on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.
The Carter G. Woodson Institute for African-American and African Studies at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA [1]
Woodson K-8 School in Houston, Texas
Woodson Regional Library in Chicago [2]
Carter G. Woodson Middle School in Chicago
Carter G. Woodson Elementary, Crisfield, MD [3]
Dr. Carter G. Woodson Elementary, Baltimore, MD [4]
Carter G. Woodson Elementary, Atlanta, GA
Carter G. Woodson Middle School in New Orleans
Carter G. Woodson Elementary School in Los Angeles.
Woodson Institute for Student Excellence Minneapolis, MN.
Carter G. Woodson Middle School in Hopewell, VA
C.G. Woodson Road in his home town of New Canton, Virginia
Friendship Collegiate Academy in Washington, DC is located on the Carter G. Woodson Campus
Carter G. Woodson Park, in Oakland Park, Florida
Carter G. Woodson Elementary School was a former school located in Oakland Park, Florida. It was closed in 1965 when the Broward County Public Schools system was desegregated.
Dr. Carter G. Woodson African American Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida [5]
Carter G. Woodson Elementary School in Jacksonville, Florida [6]
PS 23 Carter G. Woodson School in Brooklyn, New York [7]
Woodson's writings
Other information about Woodson
Dr. Carter G. Woodson
"Dr. Carter Godwin Woodson & the Observance of African History"
Library of Congress Initiates Traveling Exhibits Program
Library of Congress Traveling Exhibit re Dr. C.G. Woodson
The Carter G. Woodson Collection of Negro Papers and Related Documents
Carter G. Woodson Wax Figure at the National Great Blacks in Wax Museum
