By DeNeen L. Brown, Photo: AP, The Washington Post, February 1, 2022
In his red-brick rowhouse in the heart of D.C., the man who would become known as the “father of Black history” wrote furiously. From a second-floor “home office” at 1538 Ninth Street NW, Carter G. Woodson led and orchestrated a movement to document Black history, dictating dozens of books, letters, speeches, articles and essays promoting Black people and their place in American history.
At 12:15 p.m. on most days, Woodson, who would launch what became Black History Month, met with his staff in the kitchen of the house. He’d give orders and strategize. There was little time to waste. He saw his mission — to correct how White people wrote about Black people, and to place Black Americans at the front and center of American history — as critical.
“If a race has no history,” Woodson wrote, “it has no worthwhile tradition, it becomes a negligible factor in the thought of the world, and it stands in danger of being exterminated.”
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