Blogs

 By Jacqueline Goggin
Reviewed by Adib Rashad

This review was published several years ago in several newspapers and
magazines. However, because of the significance and relevance of Dr.
Woodson's work, the author felt compelled to rewrite it for the benefit
of those who may not be aware of the existence of the book.

The emergence of the first generation of Black scholars is a subject to
behold. Interestingly, Blacks had been writing about their experiences
in Africa and America since the antebellum period. Their works, largely
inspired and informed by specific Biblical scripture, celebrated Black
contributions to ancient civilizations (Ethiopia was a case-in-point).

Their books and pamphlets were written for the purpose of instilling
racial pride and self-esteem among Black people, and of educating
Caucasians regarding people of African descent. These scholars were
determined to make Europeans and European Americans aware of the
monumental accomplishments of African people.

Through the first decade of the twentieth century almost all of these
works came from the pens of Black history popularizes rather than
historical scholars. What made them scholars was their painstaking
commitment to manifesting the historical truth about Black achievements.

There had been, however, one major exception prior to the Herculean
works of W. E. B. DuBois, John Wesley Cromwell, and Carter G. Woodson,
and that was George Washington William's History of the Negro Race in
America from 1619 to 1880. A minister and politician, William's
(1849-91) wrote in the tradition of a self-trained historian; his two
volume book, the result of meticulous probing for primary sources, was
the first scholarly account of Africans in America.

By the turn of the century a large number of Black Intellectuals were
eager to destroy the pseudoscientific racism that then pervaded the
nation. They urged the study of Black history as a means to the
development of racial pride and self-respect, and as a formidable
opponent to mythic white supremacy.

As a consequence of this noble effort, an appreciable number of ethnic
historical societies emerged; for example, Negro bibliophiles in
Philadelphia and the New York City area were established respectively,
the American Negro Historical Society in 1897,and the Negro Society for
Historical Research in 1911.

These organizations can be regarded as preceding Dr. Carter G. Woodson's
subsequent historical endeavors. In fact, when Woodson established the
Journal of Negro History in 1916,Arthur A. Schomburg, the secretary of
the Negro Society for Historical Research adjudged it as A very
creditable effort that was Stealing our thunder.

There is no doubt that Dr. Woodson was the most significantly productive
of these pioneers on several fronts. He was the founder of the
Association for the Study of Negro Life and History in 1915; he
established, as stated above, the Journal of Negro History in 1916,and
five years later he established the Associated Publishers, which for
several decades was the most important Black publisher of scholarly
works.

Dr. Woodson's initiation of Negro History Week in 1926,paved the way for
him to be rightly known as the Father of Negro History. He, for the most
part, single-handedly launched the most successful effort to mobilize
Black people through a historical-cultural consciousness.

For decades, Dr. Woodson remained an obscure personality to the general
public at large. Fortunately, Jacqueline Goggin, of the W. E. B. DuBois
Institute at Harvard, has written a highly informative intellectually
probing study of Dr. Woodson as teacher, editor, scholar, organizer, and
advocate of Black unity.

Dr. Woodson was born in rural Virginia during Reconstruction
(1875-1950); he was the oldest of nine children of former slaves. In
1912 he became the first and only individual of slave parentage to earn
a Ph.D. in history. However, prior to the year he earned his doctorate,
he was enmeshed in a number of academic ventures.

From 1903 to 1916 Dr. Woodson taught English and other subjects in the
Philippines, and then traveled to India, Egypt, Greece, Italy and
France. In France he studied European History for a semester at the
University of Paris, and pursued research in the Bibliotheque Nationale.
After that experience, he decided to become a professional historian.
When he returned to the United States in 1907,he enrolled at the
University of Chicago, where he wrote a master's thesis titled The
German Policy of France in the War of the Austrian Succession under
Ferdinand Schevil.

He later enrolled at Harvard, where, changing his study to American
History, he worked with European American historians such as Albert
Bushnell Hart, Frederick Jackson Turner and Edward Channing, and wrote
his dissertation, The Disruption of Virginia.
Some historians have speculated that Dr. Woodson started promoting the
study of Negro history after D. W. Griffith's racist depiction of Blacks
in his film about Reconstruction, The Birth of a Nation. I surmise that
film was the culminating factor, but Woodson's early experiences in his
native West Virginia, his slave parentage, and his experiences with some
of his racist professors laid the foundation and thus spurred him to
action.

Dr. Woodson, for the most part, single-handedly built the Association
for the Study of Negro Life and History. He also edited and financed the
historical journal mentioned above, and thereby motivated a number of
Black people toward their history as a fundamental source of racial
self-respect.

In the first issue of the Journal of Negro History, Dr. Woodson noted
that except for What can be learned from current controversial
literature, which either portrays the Negro as a persecuted saint or
brands him as a leper of society, the people of this age are getting no
information to show what the Negro has thought, and felt, and done.
Therefore, the major goals of the Association for the Study of Negro
Life and History (ASNLH) was to raise funds to collect historical
documentation, support research, and establish a platform for the
dissemination of Black history.

Goggin does a masterful job at capturing the moods and temperaments of
Dr. Woodson. She cites Woodson's fierce determination to be independent,
and shows why his suspicions of European Americans' support was
justifiable. She carefully demonstrates, for example, how Thomas Jesse
Jones, a trustee of the Phelps-Stokes Fund, harbored an ongoing vendetta
against Woodson, and as a consequence, other Caucasian foundations
withdrew their financial support for Woodson and the ASNLH.

Jones persuasively argued that Dr. Woodson was a racial propagandist
rather than a scholar, and a radical racist. Despite these allegations
and the loss of funding, Woodson pressed ever harder to be academically
proficient with regard to compiling data about Africans in the Diaspora.

Another important aspect of Goggin's study is her verification of FBI
surveillance of Woodson as early as the 1930s. He was investigated
because he was proving that Negroes emerged from a rich culture, which
produced a noteworthy people. Thus, Negro history became a definite
legitimate academic specialty.

Dr. Woodson remained undaunted in his noble quest and continued his use
of Black fraternal organizations, women's clubs, churches, and local
branches of the ASNLH to raise funds. He, through his steadfastness,
kept his work and institution alive.
The government's opposition to Woodson was predicated, I believe, on two
factors: one, he was not only finding Black heroes and heroines to
augment Black pride, but also to develop the field of Black history as a
worthy academic specialty; two, the fact that Dr. Woodson discovered and
manifested Eurocentric American history as fraudulent and grossly
misrepresented. Furthermore, Caucasians, at that time, resented Africans
in America who dared proclaim their rightful place in the historical
realm.

One aspect of Goggin's book that I found rather annoying was her
conjectures that Woodson was not only eccentric, but also
psychologically disturbed. However, she failed to speculate on the
reciprocal racist environment in which he worked and his complicated
personality.

Dr. Woodson was a frequent contributor of articles to the Black press,
during the 1930s. He desperately attempted to convince Black people that
they had been brainwashed to accept Caucasian domination. When you
control a man's thinking, he wrote, you do not have to worry about his
actions. This profound theme resonated in his noteworthy book, The
MIS-Education of the Negro (1933).

Dr. Woodson, undoubtedly, was a product of his time; his invectives,
scholarly isolation, and bitter societal denunciations bespeak that
fact. However, as Goggin points out, Woodson's successors have never
accomplished as much as he did with far fewer resources.

Woodson, according to Dr. Earl Thorpe's classical work, Negro Historians
in the United States, was a middle group (1896-1930) historian (there
were three groups in total).

This group was motivated primarily by the desire to disprove the
sociological teachings on race which were then in vogue, and to use
history to raise the positions of their race through an appeal to reason
and Christian sentiments of Caucasians, and through stimulating Blacks
by uncovering a creditable past of the race which would swell its pride,
its dignity, and inspire it to new heights.
Goggin, though she only mentions Thorpe once in her text, should have
utilized his analysis in her explorational conjecture of Woodson's
eccentricities.

Excluding some minor flaws, this book should be read and scrutinized for
the purpose of maintaining African American/Black history as a viable
academic and social entity.

CLICK THE LINK TO PURCHASE YOUR COPY Carter G. Woodson: A Life in Black History (Southern Biography)

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Adib Rashad (RashadM@aol.com) is an education consultant, education
program director, author, and historian. He has lived and taught in
West Africa and South East Asia.

This article was previously published by theMarcusGarveyBBS (an entity of TheBlackList)
and TheBlackList at http://lists.topica.com/lists/TheBlackList/read

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