As the father of Black history, Carter G. Woodson would marvel at how Black History Month has become mainstream. Countless organizations, from Netflix to McDonald’s, have some sort of recognition of the contributions of Black people to American history.

It wasn’t always this way. In 1926, Woodson simply wanted a Black History Week in February to mark the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and abolitionist Frederick Douglass.

His goal then – which is still timely now – was not only a celebration of Black achievement but also to offer “the history of the world void of national bias, race hatred and religious prejudice.”

A towering figure in Black history scholarship, Woodson became in 1912 the second African American, after W.E.B. Du Bois, to earn a doctorate at Harvard. He founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History in 1915. Later, Woodson launched The Journal of Negro History and The Negro History Bulletin. Both of those academic journals aimed to legitimize the study of African American history and culture.

Woodson’s seminal work, “The Mis-Education of the Negro,” was published in 1933. “If you can control a man’s thinking,” Woodson famously wrote, “you do not have to worry about his actions.”

Renowned Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes once wrote in February 1945 that America owed Woodson a debt of gratitude. “For many years now he has labored in the cause of Negro history, and his labors have begun to bear a most glorious fruit.”

Here at The Conversation, we publish articles on Black history throughout the year, including these three recent ones.

In the first, African American studies scholar Frederick Gooding Jr., explores Black national monuments in the United States, writing that “the lack of Black statues sends a clear message of exclusion.”

The second takes a critical look at the legacy of an experiment designed to teach third graders about race shortly after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

And the third recounts the struggles of Charles Chesnutt, one of the first Black novelists at the turn of the 20th century. Like other Black artists in U.S. history, Chestnutt had to adjust his style to fit the mores of a racist society – which also pervaded the publishing establishment.

Howard Manly

Race + Equity Editor
The monument ‘Rumors of War’ depicts a young African American in urban streetwear sitting atop a horse. Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Old statues of Confederate generals are slowly disappearing – will monuments honoring people of color replace them?

Frederick Gooding, Jr., Texas Christian University

With a few notable exceptions, public monuments across the United States are overwhelmingly white and male. A movement is slowly growing to tell a more inclusive history of the American experience.
In this 1998 photograph, former Iowa teacher Jane Elliott, center, speaks with two Augsburg University students about the problems of racism. Jerry Holt/Star Tribune via Getty Images

A second look at the blue-eyes, brown-eyes experiment that taught third-graders about racism

Stephen G. Bloom, University of Iowa

Jane Elliott wanted her white students to experience what it was like for Black students. But instead of teaching about the root causes of racism, she engaged in cruelty and shame.
Charles Chesnutt was one of the first widely read Black fiction writers in the U.S. RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post via Getty Images

How a Black writer in 19th-century America used humor to combat white supremacy

Rodney Taylor, University of South Carolina

Black writers like Charles Chesnutt had to contend with a dilemma writers today know all too well: give the audience and editors what they want, or wallow in obscurity.

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