Black history's 'father' sought integration into history
When Carter G. Woodson first proposed Negro History Week in 1926, the history of black Americans was an afterthought in most school curriculums, if it was there at all.
Woodson, a Harvard-educated son of former slaves, believed encouraging schools to spend just a single week on black history would be a first step toward instilling a sense of pride in black students, toward breaking down the edifices of racism.
He chose the second week in February to acknowledge the birthdays of Frederick Douglass, the former slave and abolitionist leader, and President Abraham Lincoln.
"Woodson went on the philosophy that he was committed to studying black people so that black people wouldn't become 'a negligible factor in the thought of the world,' " says Pero Dagbovie, a Michigan State University history professor who has a book on Woodson and the early black history movement coming out later this year.
"He wanted to make sure that blacks' contributions to American democracy and history were recognized within the broader scope of U.S. history," Dagbovie says.
And what he wanted was not just a Black History Week, designated in 1972, or a Black History Month, which it became in 1976, but the integration of black history into the history of the American people and the world.
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Woodson, a Harvard-educated son of former slaves, believed encouraging schools to spend just a single week on black history would be a first step toward instilling a sense of pride in black students, toward breaking down the edifices of racism.
He chose the second week in February to acknowledge the birthdays of Frederick Douglass, the former slave and abolitionist leader, and President Abraham Lincoln.
"Woodson went on the philosophy that he was committed to studying black people so that black people wouldn't become 'a negligible factor in the thought of the world,' " says Pero Dagbovie, a Michigan State University history professor who has a book on Woodson and the early black history movement coming out later this year.
"He wanted to make sure that blacks' contributions to American democracy and history were recognized within the broader scope of U.S. history," Dagbovie says.
And what he wanted was not just a Black History Week, designated in 1972, or a Black History Month, which it became in 1976, but the integration of black history into the history of the American people and the world.