Google Doodle in USA today celebrate Carter G. Woodson who was an African-American historian,
author, journalist and the founder of the Association for the Study of African American
Life and History.
Historian Carter G. Woodson was born to poor and former slave family in New Canton, Virginia
on December 19, 1875.
During the 1890s, he employed himself out as a farm and manual worker, drove a garbage
truck, worked in collieries, and attended high school and college in Berea College,
Kentucky—from which he earned a B.L. degree in 1903.
In beginning of 1900s, he taught black youth in West Virginia.
From late 1903 until early 1907, Woodson worked in the Philippines under the sponsorships
of the US War Department.
Woodson then traveled to Africa, Asia, and Europe and briefly attended the Sorbonne in
Paris, France.
In 1908, he got an M.A. degree in History, Romance languages, and Literature from the
University of Chicago in Illinois.
In 1912, while teaching in Washington, D.C., he earned his doctorate in history from Harvard
University.
In 1915, Woodson published his first book, The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861 and
co-founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (ASNLH).
He singlehandedly launched The Journal of Negro History, now The Journal of African
American History In 1916.
In 1918, Woodson published A Century of Negro Migration and became the principal of Armstrong
Manual Training School, Washington, D.C.
From 1919 until 1920, he was the Dean of Howard University's School of Liberal Arts and
from 1920 until 1922 he served as a dean at West Virginia Collegiate Institute.
He published The History of the Negro Church and founded the Associated Publishers, Inc.
In 1921, After founding the ASNLH, he also became active in black organizations like
the NAACP, the National Urban League, the Friends of Negro Freedom, and the Committee
of 200.
He issued the first edition of his popular The Negro in Our History and decided to commit
his life's work In 1922, routinely laboring 18 hours per day, to the ASNLH and the early
black history movement.
On July 18, 1922, he purchased a three-story, late-nineteenth century Italianate style row
house in Washington D.C. located at 1538 Ninth Street, NW that became his private residence
as well as the office for the Linked Publishers, Inc. and the national headquarters of the
ASNLH.
During the 1920s, Woodson received tens of thousands dollars from several white philanthropists
to fund the ASNLH's various activities.
In 1926, he launched Negro History Week.
By the early 1930s, Woodson relied upon black communities throughout the country to maintain
his organization's actions.
In 1937, he created The Negro History Bulletin mainly for children and schoolteachers and
throughout the 1930s and 1940s Woodson spoke at countless elementary and high schools,
Negro History Week events, and at the graduation ceremonies for many HBCUs.
Once in Detroit, Michigan in February 1935, he addressed "more than 3 thousand persons."
During the 1930s and 1940s, Woodson penned several hundred essays in leading black newspapers
such as the New York Age, the Pittsburgh Courier from Pennsylvania, the Afro-American from
Baltimore, Maryland, and the Chicago Defender.
In 1933, he published The Mis-Education of the Negro.
Though he wrote, co-authored, and/or edited more than twenty books, this is his most famous
and enduring book.
Woodson expired suddenly from a heart attack in his "office home" on April 3, 1950.
He never wedded and had no children.
Deservingly dubbed "The Father of Black History," he was, simply put, a black history
institution builder.
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