School’s name a salute to father of African-American studies
On the last afternoon in February, dozens of students crowd the auditorium at Woodson K-8 School in south Houston. At Woodson, Black History Month means a little something extra.
The chorus of students and teachers sing “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” often called the Black National Anthem. Earlier, there’d been a dramatic reading of Maya Angelou’s “Still I Rise.” And second graders had presented a PowerPoint highlighting famous quotes by African-American pioneers like educator and philanthropist Mary McLeod Bethune. Most of the names on the slide are familiar.
But one name — Carter G. Woodson — is less familiar, even though it runs across the front of the school in large black letters.
But Woodson deserves to be better known: Close to a century ago, he brought black history into the American conscious. Without him, Black History Month and departments of AfricanAmerican studies might not exist.
Carter Godwin WoodsonwasanAfrican-American historian, author and journalist, known as one of the first scholars to study African-American history. Born in 1875 to parents who were both enslaved and illiterate, Woodson was raised in Virginia before attending college in Kentucky. He would earn his Ph.D. in historyfromHarvardUniversity, eventually teaching in places from Chicago to the Philippines.
Woodson’s name should be synonymous with cultural influence, says Kimberly Brown, assistantprofessorofhistory at Texas Southern University.
“It’s important to center him,” she said. “If you celebrate Christmas, it’s kind of important to know who Jesus is, right?”
Brown notes that celebrating icons like Martin Luther King Jr. or Rosa Parks would not be possible without Woodson’s foundation.Neitherwould black studies books, departments or museums.
“In short, he helped legitimize ‘woke’ culture today,” she said, adding that he laid the foundation for future acknowledgement.
Throughout his life, Woodson was adamant about professionalizing black studies at a time when it was thought that African-Americans didn’t have a history.
Brown depicts a younger, resolute Woodson. He endures stout resistance from his professors at Harvard who claimed that African-Americans made meager, if any, contributions to American society. They laughed at the idea that black people contributed to the Revolutionary War, for instance.
Woodson made it his mission to legitimize black history, exhuming the facts and figures from the past to formalize that history for the first time. He led a team that gleaned this history through meticulous research, building grass-roots connections in communities to help find additional pieces to the puzzle of the black un-image in the American narrative. Woodson lived the life of a scholaractivist, Brown said, even selling his publications at a loss.
In 1915, he helped found the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History and, a year later, began publishing the Journal of Negro History, quarterly. In 1926, Woodson launched the annual observance of Negro History Week, which became Black History Month in 1976.
Contrary to some beliefs, Woodson chose February because of two prominent birthdays: Abraham Lincoln (Feb. 12) and Frederick Douglass (Feb. 14). Another criticism has been that the selection of just one month — the shortest at that — still allows others to marginalize black history throughout the rest of the year. B
His work is more relevant than ever today, as the legacies of pioneering Americans like journalist Ida B. Wells, Harlem renaissance man James Baldwin and March on Washington organizer Baynard Rustin glow brighter in the historical spotlight. Even Frederick Douglass is being recognized.
Woodson’s legacy is perhaps most evident in his academic influence, however. He established the black studies program at my alma mater, Howard University, in Washington, D.C.
That influenced Toni Morrison, who graduated from Howard in the early 1950s before briefly teachingatTexasSouthern.The literary savant has won Nobel and Pulitzer Prizes — among many others — for her writing.