From coal mines to Harvard, Woodson built the institutions, scholarship, and movement that reshaped how America understands its past.
Woodson’s early life was marked by work rather than formal schooling. During the 1890s, he labored on farms, drove a garbage truck, and worked in coal mines, educating himself whenever possible. His academic breakthrough came at Berea College, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in 1903. Teaching Black students in West Virginia soon followed, reinforcing his belief that education was both a tool of liberation and a battleground for truth.
His career took on an international dimension between 1903 and 1907, when he worked in the Philippines under the U.S. War Department, then traveled extensively through Africa, Asia, and Europe, including study at the Sorbonne in Paris. By 1908, Woodson had earned a master’s degree from the University of Chicago, and in 1912, he became only the second African American to earn a doctorate in history from Harvard University.
Yet Woodson’s greatest impact would come not from elite credentials, but from institution-building. In 1915, he published The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861 and co-founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (ASNLH). One year later, he singlehandedly launched The Journal of Negro History—now The Journal of African American History—creating a peer-reviewed platform for scholarship that mainstream academia had largely ignored.
Woodson’s influence extended into educational leadership. He served as principal of Armstrong Manual Training School in Washington, D.C., and later as dean at Howard University and West Virginia Collegiate Institute. In 1921, he founded Associated Publishers, Inc., ensuring Black history scholarship could be produced and distributed independently.
By the mid-1920s, Woodson had committed his life—often working 18-hour days—to sustaining the Black history movement. In 1926, he launched Negro History Week, deliberately placing it in February to coincide with the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. What began as a weeklong observance would eventually evolve into Black History Month, recognized nationally decades later.
Woodson’s Washington, D.C. row house at 1538 Ninth Street, NW became both his residence and the nerve center of the ASNLH, funded initially by white philanthropists and later sustained by Black communities nationwide. During the Great Depression, he turned increasingly to grassroots support, lecturing tirelessly at schools, churches, and historically Black colleges. In Detroit in 1935, he addressed crowds exceeding 3,000 people—evidence of a growing national hunger for historical truth.
His most enduring work, The Mis-Education of the Negro (1933), offered a sharp critique of American schooling and its role in shaping racial hierarchy. The book remains a touchstone in debates over education, culture, and power. Alongside hundreds of essays in Black newspapers—including the Chicago Defender and Pittsburgh Courier—Woodson ensured scholarship reached everyday readers, not just academics.
Often called “The Father of Black History,” Carter G. Woodson was more than a historian. He was an institution builder—one who transformed memory into movement and scholarship into national consciousness.
“This Black History article is sponsored by Ford Motor Company.”
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-- By Michele Robinson
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