“A people without knowledge of their history is like a tree without roots.” –Marcus Garvey 

Colonized people are not only stripped of their rightful economic and political power; independent thought and indigenous history are also stolen from them or erased. In fact, mental colonialism is a prerequisite to forced political and economic dependency. Unjust abuse of power must be justified before it can be sustained. This truth has driven men who lead empires, men who study and account for history, and men who have misused their divine responsibility to spread God’s words to fight to control the minds of other men in order to subdue them.

The colonized must make consistent efforts to take their history back and free themselves from mental chains which lead to self-destructive ideas and practices. Fortunately for Black people in America, this process of freeing our minds began generations ago, thanks to men like Carter G. Woodson. Today, we must conscientiously continue his work and his legacy. We must utilize Black History Month for its intended purpose, not to celebrate achievements of the same few individuals every year, but to deeply understand our history and to address miseducation wherever it manifests itself in our own minds. Only by confronting miseducation will we be able to use the feats of our ancestors as inspiration to reach new heights. 

The Father of Black History: Carter G. Woodson

Carter G. Woodson was born in Buckingham County, Virginia in 1875, the fifth of seven surviving children to James Henry and Anna Elizabeth Woodson, both of whom formerly escaped  slavery. Woodson, like many Black people at the time, was raised in an agrarian lifestyle. Instead of regularly attending school, he spent that time working on the family farm. Life on the farm was not without its own education though. He learned the value of self-reliance from his father’s decision to buy and maintain land at a time when Black people were expected to be dependent sharecroppers or engage in other menial labor. On snowy or rainy days when farming work was stopped, Woodson would attend a local school operated by his uncles where he learned to read and write. 

As a teenager in 1894, Woodson followed his older brothers to the mountains of West Virginia, where he began to work in the coal mines and attend Douglass High School. While working in the mines, Woodson befriended an older miner, Oliver Jones, an illiterate Black civil war veteran who ran a small shop. Jones subscribed to many local and national newspapers (at this time, there was a thriving and self-sufficient Black press). He would have Woodson read the latest news to the miners in exchange for free food. This experience opened Woodson’s mind to the state of world affairs and instilled a love for reading and learning that would last the rest of his lifetime. Woodson was thus able to see how White media omitted or misrepresented Black stories from a young age. 

By 1896, Woodson had graduated high school and he began to attend Berea College in Kentucky the next year. He cut his studies short to teach high school in Winona, West Virginia. In 1900, he became principal of Douglass, the same school he had just graduated from. While principal, he earned his degree in letters from Berea, and he remained in that position for three years. In 1903, he left the country for the first time. He worked for the War Department in the new colony of the Philippines to educate children for the next four years. While there, he saw how American education stripped Filipino children of knowledge of their history and therefore their identity, and he noted the parallels to the state of education for Black Americans. Woodson left the islands and undertook a world tour throughout Africa and Europe before returning home and moving to Washington, D.C. 

In D.C., Carter Woodson became Dr. Carter G Woodson when he received his doctorate in history from Harvard University, becoming the second Black man to receive a PhD from the institution. He published a first book based on his dissertation titled The Education of the Negro” in 1915, which outlined the education of slaves up until the Civil War. Woodson continued his lengthy career in education at various Black schools throughout the nation’s capital—also known by its inhabitants as “Chocolate City” due to the significant African American presence there. He eventually became a dean at Howard University where he curated the university’s Black history curriculum. He soon grew tired of the politics in academia because of a feud with Howard’s White president over Woodson’s control over his own department, and sought to tread his own independent path. 

In 1915, Woodson and a group of scholars started the Association for the Study of Negro (now African American) Life and History, the institution that would become the focus of the rest of his life. The mission of the organization was simple: spread the knowledge of Black history throughout the people and fight for Black history to be recognized in academia. To achieve the latter mission, the organization soon began publishing The Journal of Negro (now African American) History—which remains in circulation today. Woodson and his associates traveled the country speaking about Black history, educating Black teachers and students while empowering them with a true curriculum, starting local chapters of the association, and subscribing readers to the budding journal they published. 

In his final years, Dr. Woodson worked tirelessly from his home in Washington, which doubled as the national headquarters for the Association, to expand organizational functions and educate more and more people. The home was virtually a library, research facility, distribution center, and administrative hub all wrapped in one, and it was the center of life for Woodson and his organization. Communications would come from across the country requesting books, asking historical questions, and seeking help with educating Black children—all of which received prompt and accurate responses supervised by Woodson. Woodson would study, research, and write articles and books until his heart finally gave out in 1950. When he died, he was voluntarily the lowest paid member on staff of the organization he started. He had no wife or kids. His devotion was entirely to his people, and to his cause of freeing their minds. Let us all have just part of this dedication to our story and to our future, and his work will not be in vain. 

The Miseducation of the Negro

Before his death, Woodson published a book that would survive the test of time and prove to be his magnum opus. In The Miseducation of the Negro, a play on the title of his first book, a seasoned and experienced Dr. Woodson concisely describes the vast inadequacy of Black education in the United States–which he memorably terms miseducation. The powerful work could have very well been written in 2024. While legislators debate whether critical race theory should be allowed in schools, new generations of Black children face the same hurdles to learning about their history as past generations. 

In seventy pages, he excoriates the irrelevance of school curriculum at all levels; he highlights the absence of Black American history which he says is, “overlooked, ignored, and even suppressed by the writers of history textbooks and the teachers who use them.” (most especially the history of civilization in Africa before the slave trade); he offers criticism and advice to educated Black people on how they can better serve themselves and their people; and offers a new guide to Black people and educational institutions on how to practically approach education for African Americans. 

The book features such chapters as, “The Educated Negro Leaves the Masses,” “Education Under Outside Control,” “The Failure to Learn to Make a Living,” and “The New Type of Educational Man Required.” Its thesis can be encapsulated in one quote, “No effort towards change has been possible, for, taught the same economics, history, philosophy, literature, and religion which have established the present code of morals, the Negro’s mind has been brought under the control of his oppressor… When you control a man’s thinking you do not have to worry about his actions. You do not have to tell him to stand here or go yonder. He will find his proper place and will stay in it. You do not need to send him to the back door. He will go without being told. In fact, if there is no back door, he will cut one for his special benefit. His education makes it necessary.” If one reads this life-changing work, the purpose of Black History Month can never be lost on them. 

Black History Month: A Woodson Legacy

Dr. Woodson organized the first Negro History Week in 1926. He chose a week in February because Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln’s birthdays were both in that week. In the 1970s, Black students at Kent State University expanded the celebrations to a month, keeping February as the date. In 1976, President Gerald Ford officially recognized February as Black History Month: every president since has continued this tradition. 

Now, with the rudimentary knowledge of miseducation and the great story of Dr. Carter G. Woodson’s dedication to the promotion of our people’s history in context, do not waste away this month. Use it to know your people! Use it to learn new aspects of your history and your roots! Go past the slave ships and study the great civilizations built by our people in Africa! Learn how your people have advanced the course of human history! Don’t Instagram it, don’t watch movies about it, READ IT! Know thyself and love thyself, and our future shall surely be bright.