BERC Commemorates the 100th Anniversary of Negro History Week
In February 1926, Dr. Carter G. Woodson established Negro History Week as one part of his multi-pronged efforts to embed Black studies into the American education system. After fifty years of celebrating Negro History Week (NHW) in February, both Woodson’s organization ASALH (the Association for the Study of African-American Life and History) and the U.S. federal government—following the lead of local Black communities who had already (for decades prior) extended their colloquial commemorations of Black history throughout the month—officially recognized the entire month of February as Black History Month (BHM) in 1976.
In one respect, the history of NHW/BHM could be traced to 1915 when Woodson established the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, an organization whose goal was to make Black history accessible to audiences far and wide. “No one has played a greater role in helping all Americans know the Black past than Carter G. Woodson,” wrote Lonnie Bunch III, Secretary of the Smithsonian and founding director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC. “To Woodson, the Black experience was too important simply to be left to a small group of academics. Woodson believed that his role was to use Black history and culture as a weapon in the struggle for racial uplift,” explained Bunch[1].
There is an abundance of historical evidence that suggests that African Americans have always been interested in their history. Naturally, the opportunities to learn, study, teach, and even make history grew exponentially after the American Civil War, when people of African descent were legally allowed to gain more literacy in reading and writing. By the end of the 19th Century, African American thinkers and writers were conceptualizing the idea of the “New Negro.” This concept gained more traction after the close of World War I in 1918. The era that is now called the Harlem Renaissance (approximately 1919-1939) was known then as the New Negro Renaissance (and/or Movement).
This period is renowned for the surge of interest in and respect for African American culture. The founding of the Schomberg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem in 1925 exemplifies the magnitude of this cultural zeitgeist. Woodson—who earned a Ph.D. from Harvard in 1912, founded ASNLH in 1915, published the first issue of The Journal of Negro History in 1916, and became the Dean of Howard University’s School of Liberal Arts in 1920—built upon the momentum of the creativity and curiosity harnessed by the New Negro Renaissance to establish Negro History Week in 1926.
Although 1926 is officially the first year of Negro History Week, it is noteworthy that in 1924, there was an initiative that was initially called: “Negro History and Literature Week” and then quickly renamed: “Negro Achievement Week,” which was led by members of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity. Woodson—an honorary member of that fraternity since 1917—had been imploring his fraternity brothers to prioritize the work of promoting the history-making achievements of the American Negro that he and other researchers had been excavating and illuminating. In 1925, Woodson decided that ASNLH should take the lead on this initiative, and Negro History Week was born.
The dates of Negro History Week were chosen to incorporate two dates that were already designated as important and celebrated in the African American community: February 14, the (self-selected) birthday of Frederick Douglass, and February 12– Abraham Lincoln’s birthday. In the subsequent years, the dates of NHW would change slightly to align with the week that encompassed both birthdays. In 1926, the first celebration of NHW was February 7-14.
To be clear, Woodson never thought or suggested that the study or celebration of Black history should be limited to or encapsulated in a one-week affair. Woodson knew that the history of people of African descent in the U.S. and the world was too immense to be relegated to, let alone explored within, such a limited time frame. Woodson’s vision of Negro History Week, as it related to schools, was for it to be the appointed time when students demonstrated what they had been learning throughout the schoolyear about Negro history. This is often the opposite of what Black History Month has become and how it is celebrated—the only time of year when Black History is prioritized.
In 1927, Woodson explained: “This is the meaning of Negro History Week. It is not so much a Negro History Week as it is a History Week. We should emphasize not Negro History but the Negro in history. What we need is not a history of selected races or nations, but the history of the world void of national bias, race hate, and religious prejudice. There should be no indulgence in undue eulogy of the Negro. The case of the Negro is well taken care of when it is shown how he has influenced the development of civilization.”[2]
Historians have reported that in the 1940s, African American communities in West Virginia began to celebrate February as Negro History Month. And by the mid-1960s, Black folks in Chicago were celebrating Negro History Month at the prompting of Fredrick H. Hammaurabi, a local cultural activist. Likewise, Black college students started transforming Negro History Week celebrations into Black History Month commemorations as their consciousness of Black history and connections to Africa increased. In 1976, fifty years after the first celebration of NHW, ASALH used its influence to have February officially designated and nationally recognized as Black History Month by the sitting U.S. President, Gerald Ford [3].
Beyond the celebration and demonstration of the Negro in American and World history during Negro History Week, Woodson envisioned that the proliferation of NHW would spark the development of immersive curricula on Black studies in schools around the country. He emphasized that it is the study of the “Negro in history” and not simply Negro History.
In this way, the Black Education Research Center carries the torch of Woodson. The creation, dissemination, and implementation of “Black Studies as the Study of the World,” the PK-12 Black Studies Curriculum for New York City Public Schools developed by BERC is an extension of Negro History Week and a fulfillment of the work of Dr. Carter G. Woodson – “the father of Black History.”
Notes
[2] Carter Godwin Woodson, “The Celebration of Negro History Week, 1927,” Journal of Negro History, April 1927
[3] https://asalh.org/about-us/origins-of-black-history-month/
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