Though less well-known than W.E.B. du Bois, the only African American to precede him in earning a Harvard Ph.D., it is Carter Godwin Woodson who is honored as the “Father of Black History.” It was he who established, in 1923 the February celebration “Negro History Week” that would evolve into today’s Black History Month. Born in Virginia in 1877 to former slaves, he experienced the hard life of the sharecropper and the coal miner. Self-taught through his teens, Woodson began his formal education in 1895, culminating in his Harvard doctorate in 1912.

In the intervening years, he served as a teacher, a school principal, and, in the Philippines, as a school supervisor. His passion was African American history. “If you teach the Negro that he has accomplished as much good as any other race,” Woodson said, “he will aspire to equality and justice without regard to race.” His significant contribution to the study of black history (reflected in the titles of his many works) derives from his belief that the social history of a people is as important to understanding as are the great events of their collective past. This work, THE HISTORY OF THE NEGRO CHURCH, is an important result of that philosophy.