Carter G. Woodson
Carter G. Woodson
Carter Godwin Woodson was an African-American historian, author, journalist and the founder of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History. Woodson was one of the first scholars to study African-American history. A founder of The Journal of Negro History in 1915, Woodson has been cited as the father of black history. In February 1926 he launched the celebration of "Negro History Week"; it was the precursor of Black History Month...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionHistorian
Date of Birth19 December 1875
CountryUnited States of America
Carter G. Woodson quotes about
What we need is not a history of selected races or nations, but the history of the world void of national bias, race hate, and religious prejudice.
The bondage of the Negro brought captive from Africa is one of the greatest dramas in history, and the writer who merely sees in that ordeal something to approve or condemn fails to understand the evolution of the human race.
It may be well to repeat here the saying that old men talk of what they have done, young men of what they are doing, and fools of what they expect to do. The Negro race has a rather large share of the last mentioned class.
The different ness of races, moreover, is no evidence of superiority or of inferiority. This merely indicates that each race has certain gifts which the others do not possess.
The race needs workers, not leaders.
And thus goes segregation which is the most far-reaching development in the history of the Negro since the enslavement of the race.
If a race has no history, if it has no worthwhile tradition, it becomes a negligible factor in the thought of the world, and it stands in danger of being exterminated.
Here we find that the Negro has failed to re- cover from his slavish habit of berating his own and worshipping others as perfect beings.
If Liberia has failed, then, it is no evidence of the failure of the Negro in government. It is merely evidence of the failure of slavery.
The strongest bank in the United States will last only so long as the people will have sufficient confidence in it to keep their money there.
This assumption of Negro leadership in the ghetto, then, must not be confined to matters of religion, education, and social uplift; it must deal with such fundamental forces in life as make these things possible.
The author takes the position that the consumer pays the tax, and as such every individual of the social order should be given unlimited opportunity to make the most of himself.
Truth comes to us from the past, then, like gold washed down from the mountains.
If the Negroes are to remain forever removed from the producing atmosphere, and the present discrimination continues, there will be nothing left for them to do.