Carter G. Woodson

From Philosopedia

Carter G. Woodson (19 December 1875) - 3 April 1950)

When 17, Woodson, a New Canton, Virginia, coal miner, lacked formal schooling but by 19 had taught himself the fundamentals of English and mathematics, finishing the four-year curriculum in less than two years. At 22, after two-thirds of a year at Berea College, he returned to the mines and studied Latin and Greek between trips to the mine shafts.

Woodson then went to the University of Chicago, earning his bachelor's and master's degrees, then went on to Harvard, where he was the second African American to receive a doctorate.

He spent his lifetime promoting black education, founding the Journal of Negro History (1916), the African-Amercan-owned Associated Publishers Press (1921), and the Negro History Bulletin (1937).

He served as dean of Howard University and West Virginia State, leaving to devote himself to black history and writing The Negro in Our History (1922).

In a 25-year report, he complained,

• One interracial agency, 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.

Fighing back, he

• began to organize the Negroes of the country to obtain from them what the interracialists had succeeded in diverting from this effort. . . . The problem became still more difficult because of having to pass through the worst depression the country has ever had. . . . The success thus achieved is a credit to the Negro race and serves as eloquent evidence of the capacity of the Negro for self-help.

Of his extraordinary accomplishments, W. E. B. DuBois said,

• He literally made this country, which has only the slightest respect for people of color, recognize and celebrate each year, a week [now a month] in which it studied the effect which the American Negro has upon life, thought and action in the United States. I know of no one man who in a lifetime has, unaided, built up such a national celebration.

Although much has been written by and about the stern-faced 5' 8" ramrod straight Woodson, who for many years lived in rented rooms, researchers have found it difficult to learn more about his personal life. Allegedly, he did not smoke or drink, cooked his own meals, ate at moderately priced restaurants at Union Station or the Phillis Wheatley YWCA.

Although Woodson alienated some friends and supporters, he succeeded by the power of example and the sheer force of his personality in creating a structure which published books, funded researchers and shaped the thinking of large masses of people. 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 '60s 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 blood."

A handful of whites made small contributions to these efforts, but Woodson and his association subsisted mainly on Woodson's teaching income, book royalties and the contributions of Blacks. In the "20s, three White foundations made contributions. But these funds dried up when the White culture structure, led by power broker Thomas Jesse Jones, objected to Woodson's policy of "telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth regardless of whom it affected."

As described in Ebony (February 2004), he was a stern-faced man, 5-foot-8, ramrod straight, and he lived for many years in rented rooms. After the Association acquired a building on Washington's 95th Street, he lived in a small apartment on the third floor, where he often held court at a white-enameled table in the kitchen. He retired early and rose early, and he didn't smoke or drink. He cooked his own meals, ate a handful of grapes for lunch and ordered dinner at the Phillis Wheatley YWCA or Union Station.

• Although Dr. Woodson enjoyed the company of women, he never married, saying defiantly and proudly that "my work is my only wife." On one occasion, Woodson told historian Rayford Logan of one of his love affairs. During a vacation at a New Jersey resort, he saw an attractive young lady whose face seemed familiar. He approached the woman and asked, "Haven't I met you somewhere before?" The woman replied: "I should think you have, you proposed to me once."
• All who knew Woodson and who afterward remembered him through the haze of the years said he could be cantankerous and irascible. But behind the forbidding exterior, many associates said, was a generous man who could be pleasant and amusing, especially in the company of young people. Dr. L. D. Reddick said his "main interest ... was in Negro boys and girls and their teachers and parents. He wanted these youngsters to grow up with an appreciation of their own possibilities through knowledge of the contributions Black folks had made to world history."

Langston Hughes had once worked in Washington, D.C., for Woodson, writing poetry at the same time. Hughes also kept his private life secret. No references have documented Woodson's or Hughes's being a member of any organized religious group, but Woodson's activities reveal his life of scholarly pursuits with no dependence upon the supernatural. His faith was in the possibility of justice for all, not just for the majority. Further attempts to find more about Woodson's life style are considered futile. What he will be remembered for is being "the Father of Black History."