Carter G Woodson Essay

Teacher

One of the most inspiring and instructive stories in black history is the story of how Carter G. Woodson, the father of black history, saved himself.

The skeletal facts of his personal struggle for light and of his rise from the coalmines of West Virginia to the summit of academic achievement are great in and of them and can be briefly stated.

At 17, the young man who was called by history to reveal black history was an untutored coal miner. At 19, after teaching himself the fundamentals of English and arithmetic, he entered high school and mastered the four-year curriculum in less than two years.

At 22, after two-thirds of a year at Berea College in West Virginia, he returned to the coalmines and studied Latin and Greek between

In 1920, he organized Associated Negro Publishers "to make possible the publication and circulation of valuable books on colored people not acceptable to most publishers." In 1922, after serving as dean of Howard University and West Virginia State, he left the teaching profession and gave himself body and soul to the movement. In the same year, he published one of the major books in the history of Black America, The Negro In Our History. On February 7, 1926, he organized Negro History Week, which was expanded in the 1960s to Black History Month. This was perhaps his proudest accomplishment. "No other single thing," he said, "has done so much to dramatize the achievement of persons of African

"One interracial agency," he wrote, "assuming the authority to dictate the leadership of the Negro race in all matters in America and in Africa, became most vicious in its attacks. This agency prepared a memorandum setting forth the reasons why the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History should not be further supported and clandestinely circulated it to lop off the supporters of the Association. Finally, it had the effect of depriving the Association of the assistance of all foundations and the rich people who had formerly assisted the