Carter G. Woodson — People — Black-History.com

Carter G. Woodson, the son of formerly enslaved Virginians and a former coal miner, earned a Harvard doctorate in 1912 and devoted the rest of his life to establishing Black history as a field of serious scholarship. He founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, The Journal of Negro History, and a Black-owned publishing house, and in 1926 launched Negro History Week, the forerunner of Black History Month.

At a Glance

Born: 19 December 1875, New Canton, Buckingham County, Virginia
Died: 3 April 1950, Washington, D.C.
Birth name: Carter Godwin Woodson
Known for: Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (1915); The Journal of Negro History (1916); Negro History Week (1926); The Mis-Education of the Negro (1933)
HBCU ties: Howard University (Dean of the School of Liberal Arts, 1919–1920); West Virginia State University (Dean at West Virginia Collegiate Institute, 1920–1922)
Fields: Education · Literature
Era: Turn of the Century

Early Life

Carter Godwin Woodson was born on 19 December 1875 in New Canton, Buckingham County, Virginia, a son of James Henry Woodson and Anne Eliza Riddle Woodson, both of whom had been enslaved. The family farmed a small plot, and Woodson’s schooling was irregular: he attended a one-room school taught in part by his uncles for a few months a year while working on the farm.

As a teenager he followed his brothers to southern West Virginia, and by 1892 he was working in the coal mines of Fayette County. By his own account, he read newspapers aloud to Black miners, among them Civil War veterans, and heard their accounts of slavery and the war; he later described the experience as an early education in history. In 1895, at about 20, he enrolled at Frederick Douglass High School in Huntington, West Virginia, and completed its four-year course in less than two years.

Woodson studied at Berea College in Kentucky, then one of the few integrated colleges in the South, and received his bachelor’s degree in 1903. Around 1900 he returned to Huntington as principal of Douglass High School. From 1903 to 1907 he worked for the U.S. government as a teacher and supervisor of schools in the Philippines, then traveled in Asia and Europe and studied at the Sorbonne in Paris.

Life and Work

Woodson earned a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in European history from the University of Chicago in 1908. He entered Harvard’s doctoral program while teaching in the public high schools of Washington, D.C., and received his PhD in history in 1912, the second African American to do so after W. E. B. Du Bois. His dissertation, “The Disruption of Virginia,” examined the political division of the state that produced West Virginia.

In the summer of 1915 Woodson attended a national exposition in Chicago celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of emancipation. On 9 September 1915, at the Wabash Avenue YMCA there, he and a small group of colleagues founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, dedicated to researching, publishing, and popularizing the Black past. That year he published his first book, The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861. In January 1916 the association issued the first number of The Journal of Negro History, which Woodson edited for the rest of his life and largely financed through his own labor and small donations.

He served briefly as dean of the School of Liberal Arts at Howard University (1919–1920) and as dean at West Virginia Collegiate Institute (1920–1922), then left academic employment to run the association full time from Washington. In 1921 he established Associated Publishers to issue books by and about Black Americans that white-owned presses would not handle. His own books include A Century of Negro Migration (1918), The History of the Negro Church (1921), and the widely adopted textbook The Negro in Our History (1922). In 1922 he bought a row house at 1538 Ninth Street NW, which served as his home and as the association’s headquarters.

In February 1926 Woodson announced the first Negro History Week. He chose the second week of February because it contained the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, which Black communities already celebrated, and he supplied schools, churches, and clubs with lesson plans, pictures, and pamphlets. The observance spread rapidly through Black schools and civic organizations. In 1937 he began the Negro History Bulletin, aimed at teachers and students.

His best-known book, The Mis-Education of the Negro (1933), argued that schooling designed and controlled by white Americans taught Black students to hold themselves and their history in contempt, and that educated Black Americans were being trained to serve others rather than their own communities. Woodson never married and lived austerely, pouring his income into the association’s work. Through the association he employed and trained younger scholars, among them Lorenzo Johnston Greene and Charles H. Wesley, and he gathered letters, church records, and family papers that might otherwise have been lost; many of the documents he collected are now held by the Library of Congress.

Legacy

Woodson died at his home in Washington on 3 April 1950, at 74, and is buried at Lincoln Memorial Cemetery in Suitland, Maryland. His Ninth Street home was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1976; Congress authorized the Carter G. Woodson Home National Historic Site on 19 December 2003, and it became a unit of the National Park System in 2006.

In 1976, during the nation’s bicentennial, the association expanded Negro History Week into Black History Month, and President Gerald R. Ford issued the first presidential message recognizing the observance. The organization Woodson founded continues as the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, and its journal is now published as The Journal of African American History. Historians regard Woodson as the principal architect of Black history as an organized discipline, often calling him the father of Black history.

For Educators

History is not simply handed down; people choose what to research, teach, and celebrate, and Woodson built the institutions that made Black history a subject every student could learn. Open the classroom lesson →

Key Dates

19 December 1875 Born in New Canton, Buckingham County, Virginia.
1892 Working as a coal miner in Fayette County, West Virginia.
1903 Earns bachelor’s degree from Berea College; begins teaching in the Philippines.
1912 Receives a Harvard PhD in history, the second African American to do so.
9 September 1915 Co-founds the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History in Chicago.
January 1916 First issue of The Journal of Negro History published.
1921 Founds Associated Publishers.
February 1926 Launches the first Negro History Week.
1933 Publishes The Mis-Education of the Negro.
3 April 1950 Dies at his home in Washington, D.C.

Sources and Further Reading

Jacqueline Goggin, Carter G. Woodson: A Life in Black History (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1993).
Carter G. Woodson, The Mis-Education of the Negro (Washington, D.C.: Associated Publishers, 1933).
National Park Service, “Carter G. Woodson,” Carter G. Woodson Home National Historic Site. Link
Encyclopedia Virginia, “Carter G. Woodson (1875–1950).” Link
e-WV: The West Virginia Encyclopedia, “Carter G. Woodson.” Link
Gerald R. Ford, “Message on the Observance of Black History Month, February 1976,” The American Presidency Project. Link

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By the Black-History.com editors. Last reviewed 30 September 2026. To suggest a primary source or a correction, write to editors@black-history.com or use our corrections form.