Remembering Dr. Carter G. Woodson ’Those who have no record of what their forebears have accomplished lose the inspiration which comes from the teaching of biography and history." These are the words of Dr. Carter Godwin Woodson, distinguished Black author, editor, publisher, and historian (December 1875 - April 1950). Carter G. Woodson believed that Blacks should know their past in order to participate intelligently in the affairs in our country. He strongly believed that Black history - which others have tried so diligently to erase - is a firm foundation for young Black Americans to build on in order to become productive citizens of our society. Black History Month was inspired by historian Dr. Woodson who started Negro History Week in 1926. An intellectual of prodigious talent, Woodson attended such venerable instituations as the University of Chicago (1907), the Sorbonne of Paris (1908) and received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1912. Through his research, he sought to recognize the accomplishments that Blacks had achieved in a variety of areas and was well-known for his work, The Mis-Education of the Negro (1933). Carter Godwin Woodson was born in New Canton, Virginia (Buckingham County, Virginia) in 1875. The son of former slaves, he was taught to read by family members. Woodson worked as a coal miner in West Virginia and obtained his education during the four month term then customary for black schools. At the age of twenty, Woodson left Buckingham County and went to West Virginia to pursue further education. He graduated from high school at age twenty-two and immediately matriculated at Berea College, from which he graduated with honors. After returning to the U.S., he began teaching at Dunbar High School in Washington, DC. He later attended the University of Chicago, later receiving his MA in History in 1908. In 1912 he earned a Ph.D. in history from Harvard University. He was the second African American to earn a Harvard doctorate. Soon after graduation from Harvard, Woodson took up a teaching post at Howard University. There, he launched what was to become his life's work, the encouragement of serious scholarly work in the fields of Afro-American and African Studies. Woodson was an active promoter of black education. He founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, the Journal of Negro History, the Associated Publishers, and Negro History Bulletin. The Negro in Our History, published in 1922, is one of his 16 books and is regarded as one of the finest accounts of African American history. In 1926, he began promoting Negro History Week during the second week of February to celebrate the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. In the same year, his efforts bore fruit with the inauguration of Negro History Week, which has now expanded into what is today known as National African American History Month. Woodson saw Negro History Week as a mechanism through which to raise the consciousness of blacks as well as whites about the intimate linkages between the cultures and societies established by persons of African descent in the New World. Despite the heavy administrative burdens of both the Association and the Journal, Woodson remained an active, creative and productive scholar. In addition to his work with Afro-American and African Studies, Woodson found the time to be the Dean of Liberal Arts at both Howard University and also, for a time, West Virginia State College. The NAACP recognized the breadth and depth of Woodson's contributions when it awarded him the Spingarn Medal in 1926. Sources: The Chicago Public Library; Info Please, Inc.; The Carter G. Woodson Institute

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