They set a theme for the annual celebration, and provided study materials—pictures, lessons for teachers, plays for historical performances, and posters of important dates and people. Provisioned with a steady flow of knowledge, high schools in progressive communities formed Negro History Clubs. To serve the desire of history buffs to participate in the re-education of Black folks and the nation, ASALH formed branches that stretched from coast to coast.
By the s, Woodson complained about the intellectual charlatans, Black and white, popping up everywhere, seeking to take advantage of the public interest in Black history. He warned teachers not to invite speakers who had less knowledge than the students themselves.
Increasingly, publishing houses that had previously ignored black topics and authors rushed to put books on the market and in the schools.
Well before his death in , Woodson believed that the weekly celebrations — not the study or celebration of Black history — would eventually come to an end. In fact, Woodson never viewed Black history as a one-week affair. He pressed for schools to use Negro History Week to demonstrate what students learned all year.
In the same vein, he established a Black studies extension program to reach adults throughout the year. It was in this sense that Blacks would learn of their past on a daily basis that he looked forward to the time when an annual celebration would no longer be necessary. Generations before Morgan Freeman and other advocates of all-year commemorations, Woodson believed that Black history was too important to America and the world to be crammed into a limited time frame.
In the s, efforts began slowly within the Black community to expand the study of Black history in the schools and Black history celebrations before the public. During the Civil Rights Movement in the South, the Freedom Schools incorporated Black history into the curriculum to advance social change.
The Negro History movement was an intellectual insurgency that was part of every larger effort to transform race relations. The s had a dramatic effect on the study and celebration of Black history. In Chicago, a now forgotten cultural activist, Fredrick H. Hammaurabi, started celebrating Negro History Month in the mids. Having taken an African name in the s, Hammaurabi used his cultural center, the House of Knowledge , to fuse African consciousness with the study of the Black past.
By the late s, as young Blacks on college campuses became increasingly conscious of links with Africa, Black History Month replaced Negro History Week at a quickening pace. They succeeded. In , fifty years after the first celebration, ASALH used its influence to institutionalize the shifts from a week to a month, and from Negro history to Black history.
Since the mids, every U. What Carter G. Woodson would say about the continued celebrations is unknown, but he would smile on all honest efforts to make Black history a field of serious study and provide the public with thoughtful celebrations. Photo by Scott Abbott. Visitors to D. The Zinn Education Project offers a selection of recommended lessons, books, films, articles, archives, and websites for teaching African American history as central to all U. View here. By Adam Sanchez. If We Knew Our History series.
By Jeff Biggers. Biggers asks us to remember the role of African Americans in shaping—and being shaped by—a region of the country that is too often forgotten. Carter G. The man behind the holiday. Woodson, considered a pioneer in the study of African-American history, is given much of the credit for Black History Month.
The son of former slaves, Woodson spent his childhood working in coal mines and quarries. He received his education during the four-month term that was customary for black schools at the time.
At 19, having taught himself English fundamentals and arithmetic, Woodson entered high school, where he completed a four-year curriculum in two years. He went on to earn his master's degree in history from the University of Chicago and later earned a doctorate from Harvard. Woodson traveled from Washington, D. Thousands of African Americans travelled from across the country to see exhibits highlighting the progress their people had made since the destruction of slavery.
Awarded a doctorate in Harvard three years earlier, Woodson joined the other exhibitors with a black history display. Despite being held at the Coliseum, the site of the Republican convention, an overflow crowd of six to twelve thousand waited outside for their turn to view the exhibits. Inspired by the three-week celebration, Woodson decided to form an organization to promote the scientific study of black life and history before leaving town.
He hoped that others would popularize the findings that he and other black intellectuals would publish in The Journal of Negro History, which he established in As early as , Woodson urged black civic organizations to promote the achievements that researchers were uncovering.
A graduate member of Omega Psi Phi, he urged his fraternity brothers to take up the work. Their outreach was significant, but Woodson desired greater impact. Going forward it would both create and popularize knowledge about the black past. He sent out a press release announcing Negro History Week in February, Woodson chose February for reasons of tradition and reform.
It is commonly said that Woodson selected February to encompass the birthdays of two great Americans who played a prominent role in shaping black history, namely Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, whose birthdays are the 12th and the 14th, respectively.
More importantly, he chose them for reasons of tradition. Well aware of the pre-existing celebrations, Woodson built Negro History Week around traditional days of commemorating the black past. He was asking the public to extend their study of black history, not to create a new tradition. In doing so, he increased his chances for success. Yet Woodson was up to something more than building on tradition. Without saying so, he aimed to reform it from the study of two great men to a great race.
Though he admired both men, Woodson had never been fond of the celebrations held in their honor.
0コメント