Carter woodson biography

Early Years

Carter Godwin Woodson was in New Canton in Buckingham County on December 19, 1875.

His parents, James Henry Woodson of Fluvanna County and Anne Eliza Riddle Woodson of Buckingham County, had been enslaved. Woodson grew up in Virginia, essential as a farm laborer with the addition of attending school in a one-room schoolhouse, where he was categorical by his uncles. In 1892 he moved to West Colony, and, following his older brothers, worked as a coal coalminer in Fayette County for get well wages than he had agreed for agricultural work.

In 1895, Woodson enrolled in segregated Douglass Excessive School in Huntington, West Town, and earned his high kindergarten diploma in 1897 after culmination four years of course outmoded in two years.

In 1903 he received a bachelor’s eminence from Berea College, an fundamental school in Kentucky founded exceed abolitionists. For the next quaternion years he taught in significance Philippines. He then earned splendid master’s degree in European representation from the University of Metropolis (1908) and a doctorate take from Harvard University (1912).

Woodson was the second African American, sustenance W. E. B. Du Bois, to be awarded a degree in history from Harvard be proof against the first person of harassed parents to receive a PhD in history.

African American Historian

While crowd the Exposition of Negro Cause in Chicago in 1915, which was organized to celebrate rendering fiftieth anniversary of emancipation, Woodson founded the Association for influence Study of Negro Life unacceptable History.

The organization was headquartered in Washington, D.C., where Woodson lived and where he seized teaching high school in description District of Columbia public schools. The same year, Woodson brawny the Journal of Negro History (its first issue was in print in January 1916), to teamwork scholars, primarily African Americans extract whites who wrote about Sooty history, a vehicle in which to publish their research.

Mortal American studies would not fur fully accepted by mainstream chronological journals until the 1960s.

In 1915 Woodson’s first book, The Edification of the Negro Prior concern 1861, was published and to sum up evaluated in the New Royalty Times within the same analysis as America’s Greatest Problem: Honesty Negro by R.

W. Shufeldt, an anthropologist and noted philosopher whose specialty was not spread, but birds. The review suggests the climate of academia eye the time and the in arrears Woodson faced in promoting Swart history.

For instance, magnanimity Times quotes Shufeldt as dispute that African Americans had not in any way “contributed a single line pile-up literature worth the printing; trig single cog in the communication of invention; an idea differ any science; or, in wee, advanced civilization a single mm since the first Congo matched set was placed on this soil.” The Times even acknowledged courier labeled as “grave” the “deplorable situation in parts of high-mindedness South, of course, with depiction daily terror that it imposes on white women.” In that context, Woodson’s arguments—that African Americans had, indeed, made important benefaction but only by overcoming patsy of years of forced illiteracy—came as a shock to diverse people.

Woodson developed an audience promulgate his journal and books unreceptive traveling around the country subject lecturing to African American organizations and institutions, women’s clubs, benevolent associations, and civic groups.

Unwind also held annual meetings female the Association for the Bone up on of Negro Life and Wildlife, and worked with schoolteachers limit boards of education to rear the study of African Denizen history. In 1921 he begeted the Associated Publishers, which was dedicated to issuing books impervious to African American authors. In 1922 his overview of the Jet-black experience, The Negro in Address History, was published.

And terminate 1926 he orchestrated the period celebration of Negro History Hebdomad in February, held in finish with the birthdays of Ibrahim Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. Throw 1976, the celebration was lengthy to a month, and has now evolved into Black World Month. In his work do faster schoolteachers, Woodson prepared curriculum means and “Negro History Kits” do encourage the study of Someone American history.

An excellent fund-raiser, Woodson received major support from milky philanthropists during the 1920s nearby early in the 1930s calculate support his program of digging and publication.

With these dosh, he was able to appropriate several younger African American scholars, including Rayford Logan, Lorenzo Callow, A. A. Taylor, Charles Clergyman, and Luther Porter Jackson pay homage to conduct research and publish books and articles on all aspects of African American life extremity history. In addition, he travelled throughout the United States extra Europe to collect primary foundation materials on Blacks that fair enough placed in the Manuscript Branch of the Library of Sitting, where they remain available keep watch on scholarly use today.

Civil Rights Advocate

Less well known are Woodson’s activities in civil rights organizations.

Soil was a lifelong member incessantly both the National Association promulgate the Advancement of Colored The public (NAACP) and the National Cityfied League. Woodson vigorously championed goodness NAACP’s antilynching campaign. He was a supporter of both proponent Marcus Garvey’s United Negro Return to health Association as well as collectivist A.

Philip Randolph’s Friends weekend away Negro Freedom. During the Decennium and 1940s, Woodson backed beat radical and leftist Black organizations, such as the New Iniquitous Alliance and its “Don’t Purchase Where You Can’t Work” holy war, which was a reaction unobtrusively the exclusion of African Inhabitant laborers from white-owned businesses derive large urban areas.

He too supported the radical National Dark Congress and attended its meetings.

Woodson died in Washington, D.C., look over April 3, 1950. The Club for the Study of Disastrous Life and History, the Proportionate Publishers, and the Journal a range of Negro History struggled to pull through after his death. Financial hardships plagued the organization throughout class second half of the ordinal century.

Yet, the organization leftovers in existence today, with spick new name, The Association representing the Study of African English Life and History, and rank Journal of Negro History into the bargain has been renamed The Newsletter of African American History additional is still published. The Immunology vector G. Woodson Institute for Afro-American and African Studies at birth University of Virginia was first name in his honor.

Although Someone American history and African Inhabitant scholars are now widely sage in academic circles, the cheap plight of ordinary African English people remains problematic. Woodson confidential hoped that widespread knowledge delighted appreciation for history would facilitate to alleviate both racial post economic discrimination and dedicated emperor efforts toward that cause.

Major Works