The Father of Black History was born on Dec. 18, 1875. Carter Woodson was born to illiterate former slaves in Virginia. His family was so poor that he had to work in the coal mines and did not attend high school until age 20. He graduated in two years and started teaching high school. He graduated from Berea College and went on to get his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1912. He was the second African-American (after W.E.B. DuBois) to get a doctorate. In 1915, he co-founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History to foster the study of black history. He felt the subject was being neglected by white historians. Although a member of the American Historical Association, he was not allowed to attend the meetings. They did not see blacks as participants in their country’s history. Woodson argued that black historians “had the advantage of being able to think black.” Woodson viewed the job of historians as to interpret historical facts and put them in context. In 1916, he started The Journal of Negro History, which he edited for the next thirty years. In February of 1926, he came up with the idea of Negro History Week. He decided on the week based on the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. (It was expanded to Black History Month in 1970 through the efforts of black students and educators at Kent State University.) Woodson often said he looked forward to the day when a special week for black history would be unnecessary. Woodson was Dean of the College of Liberal Arts at Howard University for many years. By the time he died in 1950, he had inspired many black teachers, scholars, and historians.
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Carter-G-Woodson
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carter_G._Woodson
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