My Father's Posts

One of the added treats of finding these columns of my father has been taking note of  the other writers and scholars with whom he shared space in the New York Age:  Black conservative George Schuyler and his wife Josephine Schuyler; Arthur Schomburg, after whom the Schomburg Library for Research in Black Culture is named (Back then Schomburg, who was of Puerto Rican origin, went by “Arturo”); and historian, author and educator Carter G. Woodson.  Woodson founded Black History Week, which was  scheduled for the  second week of February, bracketed by the birthdays of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln. (According to Woodson, Douglass, who was born into slavery, did not know his actual birthday, but chose Valentine’s Day. Black History Week is, of course, the precursor of  Black History Month, which we begin celebrating Tuesday.  According to Wikipedia, “The expansion of Black History Week to Black History Month was first proposed by the leaders of the Black United Students at Kent State University [my graduate school alma mater] in February 1969. The first celebration of the Black History Month took place at Kent State one year later, in February 1970.”
Woodson also founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, an organization that was founded in 1915 and still exists today. He wrote more than a dozen books, including The Mis-Education of the Negro.
Woodson argued that black people, particularly black youth, need to have a full picture of their history and historical contributions in order to develop the self worth it takes to pursue economic, political and social equality.
“If you teach the Negro that he has achieved as much good as others he will aspire to equality and justice without regard to race. Such an effort would upset the program of the Nordic in Africa and America. The present control of Negroes could not thereafter be maintained. The oppressor, then, must keep the Negro’s mind enslaved by inculcating a distorted conception of history,” Woodson wrote in a New York Age column published August 17, 1935.

Tags: african american history, black history, Black History Month, Carter G. Woodson, ebenezer ray, Frederick Douglass, genealogy, George Schuyler, Mis-Education of the Negro, new york, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the new york age