Welcome to Negro History Week

Back in 1926, Dr. Carter G. Woodson established the 2nd week of February (so chosen for being the week of the birthdays of Lincoln and Fredrick Douglass) as "Negro History Week" to overcome the historical portrait of blacks solely as slaves and sharecroppers and to instead praise the contributions of blacks absent from the history books of the day, with the dream that one day the need for the week could be eliminated, with Black History being fully integrated into American history. Instead, on its 50th anniversary it was expanded to Black History Month in 1976.

The question of when (and/or if) it will no longer be necessary lingers. Some say it will always be necessary, others have been against it from the beginning arguing it promotes separatism, and many fall somewhere along the spectrum between those extremes (or, as with many things, have no opinion at all)

Regardless of your opinions on the necessity of Black History Month, the great injustice is that Woodson himself has largely been forgotten. He was the 2nd black man to receive a ph.D from Harvard [in history] and the first child of former slaves to earn a doctorate. Today, in observance of Negro History Week and celebration of Dr. Woodson, are a few of his mostly unseen (or under-seen) words:

"Those who have no record of what their forebears have accomplished lose the inspiration which comes from the teaching of biography and history."

"Truth comes to us from the past, then, like gold washed down from the mountains."

“We need workers, not leaders. Such workers will solve the problems which race leaders talk about.”

"In our so-called democracy we are accustomed to give the majority what they want rather than educate them to understand what is best for them."

“The educational system of a country is worthless unless it [revolutionizes the social order]. Men of scholarship, and prophetic insight, must show us the right way and lead us into light which is shining brighter and brighter.”

“If you can control a man’s thinking, you don’t have to worry about his actions. If you can determine what a man thinks you do not have worry about what he will do. If you can make a man believe that he is inferior, you don’t have to compel him to seek an inferior status, he will do so without being told and if you can make a man believe that he is justly an outcast, you don’t have to order him to the back door, he will go to the back door on his own and if there is no back door, the very nature of the man will demand that you build one.”