Historian: Dr. Carter G. Woodson
In the world of Historians, there is one person that stands above all others in the field. Brother Dr. Carter G. Woodson ’17 earned his doctorate from Harvard University in 1912 at the age of thirty-seven, and he was almost nineteen before he started formal education and learned the fundamentals of reading, writing, and arithmetic. The only child of slaves to ever earn their Ph.D. Before he started on the road to a life dedicated to the education and preservation of Blacks, he hired himself out as a farmworker and manual laborer and drove a garbage truck in Buckingham County, Virginia. In 1892 Woodson moved to Fayette County, West Virginia, to work in the coal mines. While working in the mines, he met a black Civil war veteran named Oliver Jones, who introduced him to books by a pioneering amateur, self-trained black historian such as George Washington Williams, J. T. Wilson, and W. J. Simmons. Noting that he did not have any education prior other than rural schools that only opened when the children were not working the fields shows the dedicated education Brother Dr. Woodson possessed.
Another aspect of Brother Dr. Woodson that showed his dedication to his pursuit of Black History is the fact he had loved before and still had a strong attraction to women, but he never married. He was quoted as saying he could not afford a wife. He always fell back to his occupation as a coal miner and told others you can’t live as I live. I am a coal miner, and I can take almost anything. His bride was truly his work. A writer who interviewed stated to him that it was a pity that he was never married and that he should have a son to carry on his work, His reply was, ‘His books and research were his offspring, my intellectual child. Brother Dr. Woodson explained why he never married and advised others dedicated to black history like himself not to: “I have never married because, if I had done so, in my indigent circumstances my wife would not have a husband. When I began the work of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History in 1915, I realized that I would have a hard struggle … I had to take the vow of poverty, and I did not proceed very far before I ran into so many unexpected difficulties that to continue the effort, I had to also take the vow of celibacy … Except for twelve or fifteen dollars a week which I spend on myself and a smaller amount I give to a widowed sister, I turn back to work… all money which I can obtain … To be married under such circumstances would be out of the question, for I find that some of our modern women spend more than this amount in a moment for cigarettes and drinks.”
This dedication is why our Country celebrated Black History Week in schools until 1976 and it became Black History Month.
