Carter G. Woodson in Washington, D.C.: The Father of Black History
176
Carter G. Woodson in Washington, D.C.: The Father of Black History
176Paperback
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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781626196308 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Arcadia Publishing SC |
| Publication date: | 10/14/2014 |
| Series: | American Heritage |
| Pages: | 176 |
| Sales rank: | 502,675 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.50(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
CARTER G. WOODSON, 1875–1950
Black History Institution Builder
In 1937, an editorial in the Chicago Defender, "The Personal History of a Historian: The Story of the Father of Race History Who Instructs a Class of Hundreds of Thousands of Students," pronounced:
It is a feat for one who at 17 was just completing what is now regarded as an elementary education, to be acclaimed the greatest living authority on Race history at 62. Yet, that is the record of one of the greatest teachers of our time ... Others, however — though perhaps not faced with the difficulties which confronted him — have done as much. But few there are living or dead who have contributed so much to the knowledge of the world as this great instructor ... The man is Carter Godwin Woodson who was born of ex-slave parents ... As he was one of the rather large family of nine children, his parents, who started life in poverty, could not provide him with ordinary comforts of life and could not regularly send him to the five months district school any longer than when he was old enough to work on the farm.
In May 1920, Woodson wrote to Jesse E. Moorland:
You should know enough about me to understand that I am the most independently hungry man in the United States. I once drove a garbage wagon in my home town, toiled for six years as a coal miner, often saw the day when my mother had her breakfast and did not know where she would find her dinner. Many a time it was necessary for me to retire early on Saturday night that my mother might wash out the only clothing that I had that I might have something clean to wear the following day.
A decade later, Woodson further explained how his humble beginnings impacted his drive. "A poor man can write a more beautiful poem than one who is surfeited. The man in the hovel composes a more charming song than the one in the palace." Woodson continued, "The painter in the ghetto gets an inspiration for a more striking painting than his landlord can appreciate. The ill fed sculptor live[s] more abundantly than the millionaire who purchases the expression of thought in marble and bronze." When one considers Woodson's early years, his later accomplishments are nothing short of remarkable. He once told one of his understudies that he was "almost nineteen before he had learned the fundamentals of reading, writing, and arithmetic."
About one century ago, Woodson began laying the foundations for the current advanced state of the study of African American history. He was the only individual of slave parentage to earn a PhD in history, and though W.E.B. Du Bois preceded him by close to two decades in earning a doctorate in history from Harvard University (in 1895), Woodson was the first professionally trained historian to devote his scholarly career to advancing black history as if he were involved in what he routinely called a "life-and-death struggle." He made great sacrifices for the cause of black history. As he testified to Pittsburgh Courier readers in 1933, he had to "take the vow of poverty" and made "every sacrifice to maintain the work of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History." During the peak of the Great Depression years, Woodson described his commitment to "the cause." In 1932, he noted:
I have never wanted wealth. I do not know what would become of me if I have to spend twenty-five thousand dollars a year on myself. I would rather have an allowance of twelve dollars and a half a week. The only need I have for money is to relieve the stress of others. It would take up too much of my valuable time to devise selfish schemes for throwing away a large fortune, and I would not have time to help humanity.
A year later, Woodson added:
In the sphere in which we are working there is no possibility for adequate compensation. The Association for the Study of Negro Life and History cannot pay men according to what they are worth. We have never had a staff of six or seven employees receiving four and five thousand dollars each annually.
In the work of the Association an employee is supposed to catch the spirit of the organization and give his time and labor for a mere pittance. At present I am paying an employee on my staff twice as much as I receive because he has more dependents than I have; and, although he has been offered elsewhere more than he received from the Association, he remains with us.
Several persons have said to me that you are doing your work at too great a sacrifice, for the public should do more to support it ... Yet I do not think that any of our workers feel that they should be praised for what they have done. These sacrifices have been willingly made. These workers who make such sacrifices for the good of others are doing what all Negroes in the service of their people must learn to do if the race is to be extricated from its present predicament.
In 1930, one of Woodson's disciples was amazed with Woodson's commitment to his cause. "His [Woodson's] capacity for work is certainly outstanding. Eighteen hours a day seems to be routine for him," Lorenzo J. Greene noted in his diary, "He does everything from writing books, editing the Journal, wrapping books, mailing letters and parcels. Nor is he above acting as a janitor and sometimes his own cook. Truly a remarkable man." Two decades later, Harlem Renaissance poet-activist extraordinaire Langston Hughes echoed Greene's observations. Hughes recalled:
In the mid-1920's when I worked for Dr. Woodson, he set an example in industry and stick-to-it-tiveness for his entire staff since he himself worked very hard. He did everything from editing The Journal of Negro History to banking the furnace, writing books to wrapping books. One never got the idea that the boss would ask you to do anything that he would not do himself. His own working day extended from early morning to late at night. Those working with him seldom wished to keep the same pace. But he always saw that we had enough to do ahead to keep our own working hours entirely occupied.
One time Dr. Woodson went away on a trip which those of us in his office thought would take about a week. Instead, he came back on the third day and found us all in the shipping room playing cards. Nobody got fired. Instead he requested our presence in his study where he gave us a long and very serious talk on our responsibilities to our work, to history, and to the Negro race. And he predicted that neither we nor the race would get ahead playing cards during working hours.
My job was to open the office in the mornings, keep it clean, wrap and mail books, assist in answering the mail, read proofs, bank the furnace at night when Dr. Woodson was away, and do anything else that came to hand which the secretaries could not do ... It may be said truly of Dr. Woodson that never did anyone with so little bring self-respect to so many.
Many who knew Woodson reiterated Greene's and Hughes's sentiments. From the late summer of 1922 until the day of his death, Woodson worked out of his office-home at 1538 Ninth Street, Northwest, in Washington, D.C. One of Woodson's close co-workers "never knew Woodson to miss a day from the office because of illness." Woodson's unrelenting work ethic took its toll on his physical well-being and may have even contributed to his sudden death. In response to rumors that his health was failing in 1926, Woodson announced to readers of several leading African American newspapers that he was healthy. "A physician did tell me sometime ago that if I did not go more slowly I would kill myself soon," he acknowledged. But Woodson dispelled the hearsay: "I am working myself to death for the Negro, but my health is generally good."
Woodson's life was similar to the lives of many famous African Americans that overcame seemingly insurmountable odds and obstacles to achieve monumental feats. Though born during the era of Reconstruction, his early years were similar to those of one of his ideological mentors, Booker T. Washington, who rose "up from slavery."
The circumstances of Woodson's early years and upbringing clearly influenced the course of his life after he earned his PhD from Harvard University in 1912. In 1985, librarian Sister Anthony Scally commented: "Anyone writing about Carter G. Woodson discovers how difficult it is to find accurate materials." This Woodson biographer added, "Most of the accounts of Dr. Woodson contain errors of fact, not yet of great importance, indeed, in assessing the undoubted value of his work, but annoying and puzzling to the researcher." In reconstructing the important dates, events and experiences in Woodson's life, I have found that there is a range of interpretations. Scally and historians Jacqueline Goggin and Patricia Romero, among others, have offered more than a few different specific dates for certain events in Woodson's life.
Part of the problem facing Woodson's biographers is that he never wrote an autobiography. Though he did once say that he would someday "write a short autobiography," he only authored two significant autobiographical essays. In a 1932 essay printed in the New York Age and the Chicago Defender ("And the Negro Loses His Soul") and a 1944 article in the Negro History Bulletin ("My Recollections of Veterans of the Civil War"), Woodson provided some important details of his early life experiences.
Woodson was born in New Canton, Virginia, in Buckington County on December 19, 1875. His parents, James Henry and Anne Eliza (Riddle), were former slaves and shared with him firsthand recollections of life during slavery. His father told him how he had physically overpowered his master to take his freedom. He instilled within his son a sense of nonconformity. Woodson's father was hired out by his owner and created a life within the restrictive institution of slavery, learning how to fish and make furniture. During the Civil War, he worked as a contraband behind Union lines. Later in his life, Woodson commented that his father's stories sparked his later interest in documenting the memories of ex-slaves. As a professional historian, Woodson stressed the importance of documenting and recording the personal life histories of everyday people. He often instructed black youth during Negro History Week to interview their elders and document the histories of their families and communities. Woodson came from a large family, nine children in total, including his two siblings who died from a whooping-cough epidemic. Woodson's literate mother and his father raised their children to value education, a firm moral code and upright living.
In 1932, in the Chicago Defender and the New York Age, Woodson recounted the notions of self-sufficiency, dignity and elementary black nationalism that he learned from his father. Woodson recalled:
From my father ... I learned better ... He had been a field slave and could neither read nor write, but he proved to be the greatest factor in my education ... This former slave, an illiterate man, taught me that you do not have to wait until you die to think of losing your soul. He insisted that when you learn to accept insult, to compromise on principle, to mislead your people, you have lost your soul ... He taught his children to be polite to everybody but to insist always on recognition as human beings; and, if necessary, fight to the limit for it. Do not do for the traducer of the race anything he will do for you. Do not curry his horse, and grin at him for a favor. Do not brush his hat with one hand while holding the other for a tip. Do not clean his spittoons for the pittance which he offers. Do not serve in his kitchen for the refuse from his table. Do not shine his shoes to get the wornout ones for yourself ... He often said to me, "I had to do these things when I was a slave. If I continue to do them, I am not a free man. If you do these things you cannot look the oppressor in the eye and say, 'Sir, I am your equal.' Neither he nor you will believe it" ... In spite of this poverty, however, my father believed that such a life was more honorable than to serve some one as a menial. While his children were under his vine and fig tree, then, he never hired one to anybody; he never permitted one to wear anyone's cast-off clothing; and he never permitted one to go to any man's back door.
A year before Woodson's birth, his parents purchased a home and farm in New Canton, Virginia. As a child, Woodson grew up on his father's farm. Like many black youths coming of age during the immediate post-Reconstruction period, or "the Nadir," he attended a rural school for only about four months out of the year. "When he learned to read, his father required him to read to him every day from whatever discarded newspaper they could salvage. It was stale news, but a small window on a wider world." His family worked hard in order to make ends meet. Woodson labored on the family farm until he was about fifteen. He grew up very poor, as he recounted in 1932:
Often I remember that I had only one garment and had to go to bed early on Saturday night that my mother might wash this and iron it over night. In this way only I would have something clean to wear to Sunday school. Often during the winter and early in spring we did not have sufficient food, and we would leave the table hungry to go to the woods and pluck the persimmons which the birds had pierced with their beaks and left on the trees. Sometimes in the fields we had to eat the sour grass that grew early in spring out of the providence of God.
In the early 1890s, he hired himself out as a farm and manual laborer, and he drove a garbage truck in Buckingham County, Virginia. In 1892, Woodson moved to Fayette County, West Virginia, to work in the coal mines. This was certainly hard and dangerous work. A piece of slate once fell on him, causing an injury to his head. Woodson's years toiling in the coal mines left a deep impression on him. Willie Leanna Miles remembered that when she worked in the ASNLH office during the 1940s, Woodson ritualistically told visitors about his experiences in the coal mines. "I am a coal miner and I can take almost anything," Woodson often reminded his co-workers. Even with a PhD from Harvard University, Woodson held on to his working-class, coal miner identity. He took great pride in his poor, working-class background. This perhaps helps explain his drive to make the work of the ASNLH relevant to the lives of everyday black people. In a sense, he knew from firsthand experiences what the masses of black people were going through. In the early 1940s, Woodson argued that blacks would advance in America only with the leadership of "the laboring classes" since they were "not obligated to the oppressors of their people" as were their spokesmen or "hand-picked agents."
Looking back on his life in his late sixties, Woodson also described his early years as being very significant to his intellectual development. While working in the coal mines, he met a black Civil War veteran named Oliver Jones. "He was well educated," Woodson recalled, "but could neither read nor write." Jones allowed many of the coal miners to use his home as an informal school. Being the sole literate worker of the group, Woodson read newspapers to his co-workers as he had done and would later continue to do for his father. Jones also had a valuable library of books containing classic works by pioneering self-trained black historians like George Washington Williams, J.T. Wilson and W.J. Simmons. In his autobiographical essay "My Recollections of Veterans of the Civil War," Woodson credited Jones with igniting his interest in historical research. "I learned so much because of the more extensive reading required by him than I probably would have undertaken for my own benefit," Woodson recounted. "My interest in penetrating the past of my people was deepened and intensified." He added: "In this circle the history of the race was discussed frequently, and my intent in penetrating the past of my people was deepened and intensified."
Before becoming a professionally trained historian, Woodson's views of black history were influenced by those self-trained black scholars active during the last several decades of the nineteenth century like William Wells Brown, Joseph T. Wilson and especially George Washington Williams (1849–1891). In a 1945 article, "Negro Historians of Our Times," Woodson praised Williams. "Williams' History of the Negro Race has not yet been superseded by a better work, and History of Negro Troops in the War of the Rebellion far surpasses any other work on this subject," he surmised.
(Continues…)
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Table of Contents
Preface 9
Acknowledgements 13
Introduction: "Willing to Sacrifice" 15
1 Carter G. Woodson, 1875-1950: Black History Institution Builder 25
2 Woodson and the Early Black History Movement in the Nation's Capital 62
3 "Because of His Selfless Dedication to the Work of the Association": Woodson's "Mass Education Movement" 97
4 Chipping Past the "Forbidding Exterior": The Father of Black History Remembered 111
Epilogue 129
Chronology 147
Notes 155
Selected Bibliography 167
Index 171
About the Author 175