Black History 365 II

From http://afroamhistory.about.com/od/cartergwoodson/p/bio_woodson_c.htm



African-American History


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Carter G. Woodson
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From Jessica McElrath,Your Guide to African-American History.FREE Newsletter. Sign Up Now!
Dates: December 19, 1875 – April 3, 1950
Occupation: Historian and Educator


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About Carter Woodson: Carter Woodson was raised in New Canton, Virginia. He was the son of a former slave and one of nine children. Woodson’s mother secretly learned to read while she was a slave, and taught her children to read. When Woodson was twenty, he began attending Frederick Douglass High School while working in a coalmine in West Virginia. It was at the mine that he realized the importance of African American history when black miners who were Civil War veterans told him unrecorded oral histories.

Woodson completed high school in two years, and began attending Berea College in Kentucky. In 1903, he earned his bachelor’s degree. He spent time working and traveling in the Philippines, Asia, Europe, and Africa, while at the same time earning his bachelor’s in European history through a correspondence course at the University of Chicago. He received his second B.A. and M.A. in 1908. By 1912, he had received his Ph.D. in history from Harvard University.
While living in Washington, D.C, Woodson worked as a teacher at a high school until 1917. In 1916, he co-founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, which was renamed the Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History in 1976. The purpose of the organization was to publish and fund research and writing projects about black history.Woodson was so dedicated to the cause that he financed the Association with his personal income from his employment as principal at the Armstrong Manual Training School and later, with his income from Howard University where he was dean of the school of liberal arts and a professor of history. Woodson was able to resign from Howard and work in the Association full-time after the organization was given substantial financial support from the Carnegie Corporation and the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial.

With his full attention given to the Association, Woodson was able to create a successful organization that established a home study program, directed the study of African American history in schools, hired researchers to search the international archives, and lastly, he founded the Associated Publishers, which published books and resources about black history. The Association also published the quarterly publication, the Journal of Negro History, which was distributed on all of the continents.

Woodson was not just involved in promoting and publishing black history; he was also an author. His work included, The Negro Prior to 1861 (1915), The Negro Church (1921), Negro Makers of History (1928), The Miseducation of the Negro (1933), and The Negro in Our History (1922), which was considered the best textbook about black history.

Woodson is most known for his creation of Negro History Week (1926). The idea was originally that of the Omega Psi Phi, a black fraternity of which he was an honorary member. The week was a time in which contributions by blacks were emphasized. Woodson popularized the holiday when he put his name behind the idea. It eventually evolved into Black History Month in 1976.
On April 3, 1950, Woodson died in Washington, D.C.

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