Carter G. Woodson Biography Quotes 31 Report mistakes

Early Life and Education
Carter Godwin Woodson was born on December 19, 1875, in Virginia to formerly enslaved parents, James Henry Woodson and Anne Eliza (Riddle) Woodson. Growing up in a rural household where work came early and opportunities were scarce, he learned perseverance and self-reliance long before he entered a classroom on a regular basis. As a teenager and young man he labored in West Virginia coal mines, saving money and studying when he could. Determined to secure an education, he enrolled in high school in Huntington, West Virginia, later than most, and moved through his studies at a remarkable pace, evidence of the keen intellect and discipline that would define his career.

Teacher, Scholar, and Harvard Doctorate
Woodson began formal higher education at Berea College in Kentucky, completing his work there in 1903. Soon after, he taught in the Philippines in the early years of American administration, an experience that broadened his global perspective on education and history. He pursued further study at the University of Chicago, where he earned advanced degrees, and then completed a PhD in history at Harvard University in 1912. He was the second African American, after W. E. B. Du Bois, to earn a doctorate from Harvard. Woodson's scholarly training sharpened his commitment to rigorous archival research and to writing history that placed Black people at the center of their own story.

Building Institutions of Black History
Convinced that existing academic institutions neglected the history of people of African descent, Woodson set out to build alternatives. In 1915 he founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (ASNLH) with colleagues George Cleveland Hall, Alexander L. Jackson, William B. Hartgrove, and James E. Stamps. The following year he launched The Journal of Negro History, a peer-reviewed platform devoted to original research that he edited for decades. To ensure that books on Black history reached schools, churches, and civic groups, he established Associated Publishers in 1921. These organizations allowed Woodson to cultivate a scholarly network and to sustain an independent publishing pipeline at a time when mainstream outlets offered little space for such work.

Academic Leadership and Collaborations
Woodson taught and held administrative posts at institutions including Howard University and West Virginia Collegiate Institute (now West Virginia State University). He recruited, mentored, and collaborated with a generation of scholars who would shape the field, among them Charles H. Wesley, Lorenzo Johnston Greene, and Rayford W. Logan. Wesley coauthored later editions of The Negro in Our History and helped extend Woodson's institutional vision. Greene worked with Woodson on research projects that documented Black life and labor, while Logan became a major interpreter of the post-Reconstruction era. Woodson also found powerful allies outside the academy. Mary McLeod Bethune, educator and founder of the National Council of Negro Women, used her broad civic influence to champion his initiatives and expand their reach.

Negro History Week and Public Impact
In 1926 Woodson created Negro History Week, timed to coincide with the February birthdays of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln. He intended it not as a token celebration but as a lever to integrate Black history into curricula year-round. Through the ASNLH, the Black press, and networks of churches, schools, fraternities, and sororities, he distributed lesson plans, bibliographies, and posters that brought new material into classrooms across the country. The observance took root and, decades later, expanded into Black History Month in the United States, a testament to Woodson's strategic approach to public education.

Publications and Ideas
Woodson wrote prolifically to make scholarship accessible. A Century of Negro Migration (1918) mapped the movement that reshaped communities across the nation. The History of the Negro Church (1921) underscored the centrality of religious institutions to Black social and political life. The Negro in Our History (1922) offered a broad narrative suitable for schools and civic groups. His most widely read book, The Mis-Education of the Negro (1933), critiqued curricula that ignored or distorted Black experiences, arguing that such omissions damaged both individual self-conception and national understanding. Across all his work, he insisted on primary sources, careful documentation, and an analysis that emphasized Black agency.

Later Years and Legacy
From his base in Washington, D.C., Woodson sustained a demanding routine of research, editing, and organizational leadership. He guarded the independence of his institutions so they could remain focused on the mission of collecting, publishing, and teaching Black history. He collaborated with figures such as W. E. B. Du Bois on broader intellectual initiatives and maintained strong ties to teachers, librarians, and community leaders who implemented his ideas at the grassroots level. Woodson died in Washington on April 3, 1950. By then he was widely known as the Father of Black History, a recognition rooted not only in his own scholarship but in the durable institutions he built and the colleagues he empowered. The continued life of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, the ongoing publication of the Journal of African American History, and the annual observance of Black History Month all trace directly to his vision. His Washington home stands as a national historic site, but his deeper memorial is the transformed landscape of American education, where the histories he fought to preserve and teach are now central to understanding the nation.

Our collection contains 31 quotes who is written by Carter, under the main topics: Leadership - Learning - Freedom - Free Will & Fate - Equality.