Carter Godwin Woodson (December 19, 1875 - April 3, 1950) is a historian, writer, journalist and founder of the Association for the Study of Life and History of African Americans. He was one of the first scholars to study African-American history. A founder of The Journal of Negro History in 1916, Woodson has been cited as "the father of black history". In February 1926 he launched the celebration of "Negro History Week", the predecessor of the Black History Month.
Video Carter G. Woodson
Early life and education
Carter G. Woodson was born in Buckingham County, Virginia on December 19, 1875, the son of a former slave, James and Eliza Riddle Woodson. His father helped Union troops during the Civil War and moved his family to West Virginia when he heard that Huntington was building a high school for blacks.
Coming from a large and poor family, Carter Woodson can not regularly attend school. Through his own instruction, he mastered the basics of general school subjects at the age of 17 years. Wanting more education, he went to Fayette County to earn a living as a miner in a coal field, and was only able to devote several months each year to his school.
In 1895, at the age of 20, Woodson entered Douglass High School, where he received a diploma in less than two years. From 1897 to 1900, Woodson taught at Winona in Fayette County. In 1900 he was elected headmaster of Douglass High School. He earned a Bachelor of Letters degree from Berea College in Kentucky in 1903 by taking a part-time class between 1901 and 1903. From 1903 to 1907, Woodson was a school superintendent in the Philippines.
Woodson then attended the University of Chicago, where he was awarded A.B. and A.M. in 1908. He was a member of the first professional black fraternity Sigma Pi Phi and a member of Omega Psi Phi. He completed a PhD in history at Harvard University in 1912, where he was the second African American (after W. E. B. Du Bois) to earn his doctorate. His doctoral dissertation, The Disruption of Virginia, was based on research he conducted at the Library of Congress while teaching high school in Washington, DC After obtaining his doctorate, he continued to teach in a public school, then joined the faculty at the University Howard as a professor, and serves there as Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Science.
Maps Carter G. Woodson
Careers
Convinced that the role of his own people in American history and in other cultural histories was ignored or misunderstood among scholars, Woodson recognized the need for research into the past that African Americans have missed. Together with William D. Hartgrove, George Cleveland Hall, Alexander L. Jackson, and James E. Stamps, he founded the Association for the Study of Life and Historical Negro on September 9, 1915, in Chicago. It was the year that Woodson published The Education of the Negro Before to 1861 . Other books follow: Century of Negro Migration (1918) and History of the Negro Church (1927). His work The Negro in Our History was reprinted in various editions and revised by Charles H. Wesley after Woodson's death in 1950.
In January 1916, Woodson began publishing the scientific journal Journal of Negro History. This never missed a problem, despite the Great Depression, lost support of the foundation, and two World Wars. In 2002, it was renamed the Journal of African American History and continues to be published by the Association for the Study of Life and History of African Americans (ASALH).
Woodson lived on Wabash Avenue YMCA during a visit to Chicago. His experience in Y and in the surrounding Bronzeville neighborhood inspired him to create the Association of Life Studies and the History of Negro in 1915. The Association for the Study of Life and Historical Negro (now the Association for the Study of African American Life and History), which organized the conference, published The Journal of Negro History , and "specifically targeting those responsible for black children's education". Another inspiration is John Wesley Cromwell's 1914 book, The Negro in American History: A Leading Man and Woman in the Evolution of African Americans.
Woodson believes that education and increased social and professional contact between blacks and whites can reduce racism and he promotes the study of organized African-American history partly for that purpose. He would later promote the first Negro History Week in Washington, D.C., in 1926, the predecessor of the Black History Month. The Bronzeville neighborhood declined during the late 1960s and 1970s like many neighborhoods in other cities across the country, and Wabash Avenue YMCA was forced to close during the 1970s, until it was restored in 1992 by The Renaissance Collaborative.
He served as the Academic Dean of the Institute of West Virginia College, now State College of West Virginia, from 1920 to 1922.
He studied many aspects of African-American history. For example, in 1924, he published his first free black slave survey in the United States in 1830.
NAACP
Woodson became affiliated with the Washington branch, D.C. from NAACP, and its chairman Archibald GrimkÃÆ'Â ©. On January 28, 1915, Woodson wrote a letter to GrimkÃÆ'Â menyatakan expressed his dissatisfaction with the activity and made two proposals:
- That the branch office secures the headquarters that can be reported by anyone of concern to the black race, and from which the Association may extend its operations to any part of the city; and
- That a canvasser is appointed to register members and get a subscription for The Crisis , a NAACP magazine edited by W. E. B. Du Bois.
Du Bois added a proposal to divert the "patronage of a business enterprise that does not treat the same race," that is, a boycott business. Woodson writes that he will work together as one of twenty-five effective introductions, adding that he will pay office rent for a month. GrimkÃÆ' Â © does not welcome Woodson's ideas.
In response to GrimkÃÆ'Â's comment on his proposal, on March 18, 1915, Woodson wrote:
I am not afraid of being sued by white entrepreneurs. In fact, I should welcome such a lawsuit. It will cause a lot of good things. Let us get rid of fear. We have been in this mental state for three centuries. I am a radical. I am ready for action, if I can find a courageous man to help me.
His disagreement with GrimkÃÆ'Â ©, who wanted a more conservative course, contributed to Woodson who ended his affiliation with the NAACP.
Black History Month
Woodson devoted the rest of his life to historical research. He works to preserve African American history and collect a collection of thousands of artifacts and publications. He noted that African-American contributions were "ignored, ignored, and even suppressed by the history textbook writers and teachers who used them." Racial prejudice, he concludes, "is merely the logical outcome of tradition, the inevitable outcome of thorough instruction to the effect that the Negro has never contributed anything to the progress of mankind."
In 1926, Woodson pioneered the "Negro History Week" celebration, aimed for the second week of February, to coincide with the anniversary of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. However, Black United students and Black educators at Kent State University founded Black History Month, on February 1, 1970.
Colleague
Woodson believes in racial independence and respect, the values ​​he shares with Marcus Garvey, a Jamaican activist working in New York. Woodson became a regular columnist for Weekly weekly Garvey Negro World .
Woodson's political activism placed him at the center of many black intellectual circles and activists from the 1920s through the 1940s. He corresponds to W. E. B. Du Bois, John E. Bruce, Arturo Alfonso Schomburg, Hubert H. Harrison, and T. Thomas Fortune, among others. Even with the extended assignment of the Association, Woodson was able to write academic works such as The History of the Negro Church (1922), Mis-Education of the Negro (1933), and others who continued to have wide readers.
Woodson does not shy away from controversial subjects, and uses the Black World pages to contribute to the debate. One problem related to West India/African-American relations. He sums up that "free West Indian Negro", and observes that West Indian society has been more successful at dedicating precisely the amount of time and resources needed to educate and truly liberate people. Woodson approved the efforts of Western Indians to include material related to the history and culture of Black into their school curriculum.
Woodson was ostracized by some of his contemporaries for his insistence on defining the historical categories related to culture and ethnic races. At the time, these educators felt that it was wrong to teach or understand African-American history as separate from the more general American history. According to these educators, "Negroes" are only Americans, dark-skinned, but without history other than others. So, Woodson's attempt to gain Black culture and history into the institutional curriculum, even historically, the Black college, is often unsuccessful.
Death and inheritance
Woodson died suddenly of a heart attack at his home office in the Shaw neighborhood of Washington, D.C., on April 3, 1950, at the age of 74. He is buried at the Lincoln Memorial Cemetery in Suitland, Maryland.
The time schools are set aside each year to focus on African-American history is Woodson's most visible legacy. His determination to advance the recognition of Negroes in American and world history, however, inspired many other scholars. Woodson remained focused on his work throughout his life. Many see it as a man of vision and understanding. Although Woodson was among the ranks of educated people, he did not feel sentimental about elite educational institutions. The associations and journals that he started are still in operation, and both have earned intellectual rewards.
Other far-reaching activities of Woodson include the establishment in 1920 of the Related Publisher, the oldest African-American publishing company in the United States. This allows the publication of books on blacks that may not be supported throughout the market. He founded Negro History Week in 1926 (now known as Black History Month). He created the Negro History Bulletin, developed for teachers in primary and secondary schools, and published continuously since 1937. Woodson also influenced the Association's lead and subsidized research in African-American history. He wrote many articles, monographs, and books on Blacks. The Negro in Our History reached its 11th edition in 1966, when it sold over 90,000 copies.
Source of the article : Wikipedia
0 Comments