Black History Month Library Guide

"Prominent African American activist Carter Godwin Woodson (1875–1950), a historiographer by training, was the first to suggest setting aside an annual period to recognize the experiences of African Americans. Woodson received a PhD in history from Harvard University, becoming the second African American to earn a doctorate from Harvard. As a historian, Woodson studied African American culture in relation to the American education system. He became interested in the ways in which the legacy of slavery affected educational and intellectual attainment within the African American community.

Slave laws had explicitly forbidden the teaching of enslaved African Americans to read and write, and this helped to create a multigenerational educational disparity that greatly affected the degree to which African American contributions to history were recorded. Woodson believed that this early educational imbalance placed later African Americans at a disadvantage with regard to educational achievement and that this further affected African Americans’ ability to preserve their own history. Woodson pioneered a number of initiatives meant to address this issue, including founding the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (later the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, ASALH) in 1915, which began publishing the Journal of Negro History (later the Journal of African American History) in 1916.

Woodson initially found little support for his efforts outside of a small number of academics who purchased subscriptions to his publication. Eventually, Woodson’s initiatives attracted the attention of Julius Rosenwald, a Jewish businessman and philanthropist from Springfield, Illinois. Partially because he was a Jewish American, Rosenwald had a keen interest in helping marginalized groups. He dedicated 100 dollars per quarter to Woodson’s journal, becoming the first white American to support Woodson and the ASALH. With this funding, Woodson was able to expand publication of the journal.

In 1926, Woodson and the ASALH designated the second week in February as National Negro Week; they chose the week because it contains the birthdays of both Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, two major figures in African American history. From the beginning, Woodson made it clear that he intended Negro History Week to serve as a focal point for “celebrating” the role of African Americans in American history, rather than for airing grievances regarding the continued discrimination and racism suffered by African Americans. Woodson wrote in one of his annual bulletins regarding the event, “If a race has no history, if it has no worthwhile tradition, it becomes a negligible factor in the thought of the world.”

During the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, some African American leaders spoke out against National Negro Week, calling it a relatively superficial gesture to address the ongoing prejudice and inequality present in the educational system. During the United States Bicentennial, in 1976, the ASALH expanded Black History Week—as it was renamed in 1972—into a month-long annual observance. In a speech delivered that year, President Gerald R. Ford praised the concept, saying that “we can seize the opportunity to honor the too-often neglected accomplishments of black Americans in every area of endeavor throughout our history.”

Black History Month gradually became more commercial into the twenty-first century, with many corporations using the month to produce products aimed at African American audiences. This led to increased criticism from within the African American community. In 1986, the United States Congress passed, and President Ronald Reagan signed, Public Law 99-244, which formally established Black History Month as a federally designated observance.

During the 1980s, the concept of Black History Month spread internationally. In the United Kingdom, the Greater London Council and a coalition of African European leaders helped to initiate a Black History Month in Britain, which is observed in October. In 1995, Toronto Member of Parliament Jean Augustine proposed, and the House of Commons unanimously passed, a motion to recognize Black History Month in Canada in the month of February. This parliamentary move came as part of a long-developing series of minor initiatives to recognize the contributions of African Canadians, especially focused in Canada’s major cities."

Issitt, M. (2020). Black History Month. Salem Press Encyclopedia. Retrieved from: http://glbvv001.enmu.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ers&AN=89158063&site=eds-live&scope=site