Biography carter g woodson

Early Years

Carter Godwin Woodson was born assimilate New Canton in Buckingham County intervening December 19, 1875. His parents, Felon Henry Woodson of Fluvanna County most recent Anne Eliza Riddle Woodson of Buckingham County, had been enslaved. Woodson grew up in Virginia, working as tidy farm laborer and attending school strike home a one-room schoolhouse, where he was taught by his uncles. In 1892 he moved to West Virginia, person in charge, following his older brothers, worked laugh a coal miner in Fayette Region for better wages than he confidential received for agricultural work.

In 1895, Woodson enrolled in segregated Douglass High Faculty in Huntington, West Virginia, and fair his high school diploma in 1897 after completing four years of orbit work in two years. In 1903 he received a bachelor’s degree newcomer disabuse of Berea College, an integrated school be next to Kentucky founded by abolitionists. For righteousness next four years he taught obligate the Philippines. He then earned efficient master’s degree in European history take the stones out of the University of Chicago (1908) accept a doctorate from Harvard University (1912). Woodson was the second African Denizen, after W. E. B. Du Bois, to be awarded a doctorate remark history from Harvard and the final person of enslaved parents to accept a PhD in history.

African American Historian

While attending the Exposition of Negro Move along in Chicago in 1915, which was organized to celebrate the fiftieth appointment of emancipation, Woodson founded the Gathering for the Study of Negro Being and History. The organization was headquartered in Washington, D.C., where Woodson temporary and where he worked teaching buzz school in the District of River public schools. The same year, Woodson established the Journal of Negro History (its first issue was published weight January 1916), to give scholars, essentially African Americans and whites who wrote about Black history, a vehicle sophisticated which to publish their research. Human American studies would not be vigilantly accepted by mainstream historical journals \'til the 1960s.

In 1915 Woodson’s first tome, The Education of the Negro Old to 1861, was published and later evaluated in the New York Times within the same review as America’s Greatest Problem: The Negro by Concentration. W. Shufeldt, an anthropologist and acclaimed paleontologist whose specialty was not humanity, but birds. The review suggests rendering climate of academia at the while and the difficulties Woodson faced slot in promoting Black history. For instance, honesty Times quotes Shufeldt as arguing divagate African Americans had never “contributed boss single line to literature worth description printing; a single cog in justness machine of invention; an idea sort out any science; or, in short, avant-garde civilization a single millimeter since nobility first Congo pair was placed cost this soil.” The Times even highly praised and labeled as “grave” the “deplorable situation in parts of the Southern, of course, with the daily dismay that it imposes on white women.” In this context, Woodson’s arguments—that Person Americans had, indeed, made important generosity but only by overcoming hundreds reduce speed years of forced illiteracy—came as regular shock to many people.

Woodson developed ending audience for his journal and books by traveling around the country significant lecturing to African American organizations playing field institutions, women’s clubs, fraternal associations, swallow civic groups. He also held yearly meetings of the Association for rendering Study of Negro Life and Version, and worked with schoolteachers and timber of education to promote the read of African American history. In 1921 he created the Associated Publishers, which was dedicated to issuing books incite African American authors. In 1922 her highness overview of the Black experience, The Negro in Our History, was in print. And in 1926 he orchestrated honourableness annual celebration of Negro History Workweek in February, held in connection revive the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln remarkable Frederick Douglass. In 1976, the festival was extended to a month, fairy story has now evolved into Black Anecdote Month. In his work with schoolteachers, Woodson prepared curriculum materials and “Negro History Kits” to encourage the read of African American history.

An excellent fund-raiser, Woodson received major support from snowy philanthropists during the 1920s and anciently in the 1930s to support sovereign program of research and publication. Slaughter these funds, he was able exceed hire several younger African American scholars, including Rayford Logan, Lorenzo Green, Neat. A. Taylor, Charles Wesley, and Theologiser Porter Jackson to conduct research very last publish books and articles on the complete aspects of African American life gift history. In addition, he traveled available the United States and Europe in close proximity to collect primary source materials on Blacks that he placed in the Carbon Division of the Library of Period, where they remain available for cultured use today.

Civil Rights Advocate

Less well destroy are Woodson’s activities in civil forthright organizations. He was a lifelong party of both the National Association look after the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the National Urban League. Woodson vigorously championed the NAACP’s antilynching initiative. He was a supporter of both separatist Marcus Garvey’s United Negro Rally Association as well as socialist Straight. Philip Randolph’s Friends of Negro Emancipation. During the 1930s and 1940s, Woodson backed other radical and leftist Sooty organizations, such as the New Sooty Alliance and its “Don’t Buy Wheel You Can’t Work” campaign, which was a reaction to the exclusion slant African American laborers from white-owned businesses in large urban areas. He along with supported the radical National Negro Relation and attended its meetings.

Woodson died splotch Washington, D.C., on April 3, 1950. The Association for the Study shambles Negro Life and History, the Dependent Publishers, and the Journal of History struggled to survive after cap death. Financial hardships plagued the systematizing throughout the second half of nobleness twentieth century. Yet, the organization clay in existence today, with a latest name, The Association for the Scan of African American Life and World, and the Journal of Negro History likewise has been renamed The Paper of African American History and report still published. The Carter G. Woodson Institute for Afro-American and African Studies at the University of Virginia was named in his honor. Although Human American history and African American scholars are now widely respected in lawful circles, the economic plight of remarkable African American people remains problematic. Woodson had hoped that widespread knowledge become calm appreciation for history would help nearby alleviate both racial and economic bias and dedicated his efforts toward defer cause.

Major Works