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Carter G. Woodson

In 1875, Carter Woodson was born in Buckingham County, Virginia. After working for a time in a Fayette County coal mine, he moved with his parents to Huntington in 1893. Woodson graduated from Douglass High School in 1896. Four years later, he returned to Douglass as teacher and principal. Woodson then entered the University of Chicago where he received his bachelor’s and master’s degree. In 1912, Woodson was the second black to earn a doctorate from Harvard, the first being W. E. B. DuBois. He also studied at the Sorbonne in Paris. In 1915, the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History was founded by Woodson. After 1922, he devoted all of his energies to studying and promoting African-American history. In 1916, Woodson founded the Journal of Negro History. He also authored The Negro In Our History. Woodson was compiling his work, Encyclopaedia Africana which was not complete at the time of his death in 1950. Carter G. Woodson spent his life preserving Black heritage. Library wings were built in his honor at both The University of Tennessee and The University of Virginia. The Carter G. Woodson monument, erected in commemoration of this great scholar, stands today on Hal Greer Boulevard in Huntington.