CARTER GODWIN WOODSON DECEMBER 19-1875

CARTER GODWIN WOODSON DECEMBER 19-1875 

 

Murphy Browne © December 15, 2020 

 

“Those who have no record of what their forebears have accomplished lose the inspiration which comes from the teaching of biography and history.” 

 

Carter Godwin Woodson (December 19, 1875 – April 3, 1950) 

 

Carter Godwin Woodson is recognized as the father of Black History Month/African Heritage Month. He was born on December 19, 1875, 10 years after slavery was abolished in the USA. His parents, Anne Eliza (Riddle) and James Henry Woodson were formerly enslaved Africans. Carter Godwin Woodson was an African American author, historian and journalist. In February 1926 he launched the celebration of "Negro History Week" which eventually became the month-long Black History Month/African Heritage Month. 

The virulent anti-African racism of the southern United States prevented Woodson from attending school on a regular basis until he was 17 years old. That was not a deterrent to this young African American who is said to have possessed an unquenchable thirst for learning from an early age. Whenever the opportunity presented itself, he attended the local school and eventually went to Berea College in Kentucky. He persevered and received a B.A. from the University of Chicago in 1907. In 1908 he attended the Sorbonne University in Paris where he became fluent in French. He received a Ph.D. in History from Harvard University in 1912. Woodson taught briefly and held educational administrative posts in the Philippines, at Howard University (where he was Dean of the School of Liberal Arts), and West Virginia State College.  

 Woodson was the founder of the “Association for the Study of Negro Life and History” and the “Journal of Negro History.” He wrote more than a hundred articles and 125 book reviews which were published in the “Journal of Negro History.” His activism was viewed as controversial by some members of the African American community. On January 28, 1915, he wrote a letter to Archibald Grimke the Chairman of the recently organized Washington, D.C. branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) expressing his dissatisfaction with the NAACP. Woodson made a few suggestions in this letter that came to be viewed as too controversial for the NAACP. His proposals were that the branch rent an office and establish a center where African Americans could report their concerns about racism and from which the NAACP could extend its operations into every part of the city. His second suggestion was that twenty-five canvassers be appointed to enlist members and obtain subscriptions for the “Crisis,” the NAACP publication edited by W.E.B. Dubois. The NAACP was founded on February 12, 1909, in New York partially in response to the ongoing violence against African Americans around the country. Its anti-lynching campaign was central to the agenda of the organization. The members of the NAACP promised to champion equal rights and eliminate racial prejudice, and to “advance the interest of colored citizens” in voting rights, legal justice and educational and employment opportunities. 

In his January 28, 1915 letter, Woodson also suggested "diverting patronage from business establishments which do not treat races alike." He offered to support this initiative by working as a canvasser adding that he would pay the rent for the office for one month. It seems Grimke as the NAACP spokesperson did not welcome Dr. Woodson’s ideas. His ideas seemed to be too controversial for the educated “middle class Negro” membership of the NAACP and their white “allies.” In a letter dated March 18, 1915, in response to a letter from Grimke regarding his proposals, Woodson wrote, "I am not afraid of being sued by white businessmen. In fact, I should welcome such a lawsuit. It would do the cause much good. Let us banish fear. We have been in this mental state for three centuries. I am a radical. I am ready to act, if I can find brave men to help me." Needless to say, Dr. Woodson's association with the NAACP and Grimke was short-lived. In contrast, Dr. Woodson was a regular columnist for Marcus Garvey's weekly publication “The Negro World.” Never one to shy away from seemingly “controversial subjects,” Woodson utilized the pages of “The Negro World” to advocate for the inclusion of African history in the curricula of educational institutions.  

Woodson’s efforts to include African culture and history into the curricula of institutions were unsuccessful because “highly educated Negroes” subscribed to the idea of white supremacy. Woodson wrote in his “Mis-education of the Negro” published in 1933; “The so-called modern education, with all its defects, however, does others so much more good than it does the Negro, because it has been worked out in conformity to the needs of those who have enslaved and oppressed weaker peoples. For example, the philosophy and ethics resulting from our educational system have justified slavery, peonage, segregation, and lynching. The oppressor has the right to exploit, to handicap, and to kill the oppressed. Negroes daily educated in the tenets of such a religion of the strong have accepted the status of the weak as divinely ordained, and during the last three generations of their nominal freedom they have done practically nothing to change it.” It has been suggested that this lack in the education system was Woodson’s reason for leaving his position at Howard University. Woodson dedicated his life to researching and writing about the history, achievements and contributions of Africans from the continent and the Diaspora. This is not surprising because his father had told him that “learning to accept insult, to compromise on principle, to mislead your fellow man, or to betray your people, is to lose your soul.” 

 

Woodson’s work laid the foundation for the annual Pan-African (December 26 to January 1,) celebration of Kwanzaa. The architect/founder of Kwanzaa acknowledged the influence of Woodson on the celebration of Kwanzaa in an article published February 14, 2019 entitled “Remembering and Re-Reading Woodson: Envisioning an Emancipatory Education.” Dr. Maulana Karenga wrote: “Thru reflective remembrance and recommitment to ever-deeper study and emancipatory practice, our minds easily turn to the writings and life work of the father of Black History Month, Dr. Carter G. Woodson (1875–1950). Indeed, this Woodsonian stress also anticipates and lays a foundation for the Kawaida conception of a relevant and culturally grounded education, a cooperative and directive process designed to aid our students in achieving four broad objectives: knowledge of the world; knowledge of themselves in the world; knowledge of how to successfully engage the world; and knowledge of how to direct their lives toward good and expansive ends.” The Kawaida philosophy forms the foundation and framework for the celebration off Kwanzaa. “For it is out of Kawaida philosophy that Kwanzaa and the Nguzo Saba were conceived and thru which they are continually renewed, enriched and expanded.” 

 

We are in that month (December) and the season of celebration (Christmas and Kwanzaa) even during this ongoing pandemic. Merry Christmas and Kwanzaa yenu iwe na heri! to all those celebrating. 

 

Murphy Browne © December 15, 2020 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCSWKoQklRA

How to light the mishumaa saba (seven candles) to celebrate Kwanzaa. 

Kwanzaa Seven Candles Mishumaa Saba Kwanzaa Seven Candles Mishumaa Saba http://kwanzaamedia.com/dvd The Mishumaa Saba are the seven candles that go into a Kwanzaa display. Each candle represents one of the seven principles of Kwanzaa. The Mishumaa Saba are placed in the kinara or candle holder. The black candle goes in the middle, three red candles go on the left and three green ... www.youtube.com

 

ROSA PARKS DECEMBER 1, 1955

 ROSA PARKS DECEMBER 1, 1955 

 

Murphy Browne © December 1, 2020 

 "The Women’s Political Council will not wait for Mrs Parks’s consent to call for a boycott of city buses. On Friday December, 2, 1955, the women of Montgomery will call for a boycott to take place on Monday, December 5.  

On December 5, 1955, fifty thousand people – the generally estimated black population – walked off public city buses in defiance of existing conditions which were demeaning, humiliating and too intolerable to endure.” 

 

From “The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It: The Memoir of Jo Ann Gibson Robinson” by Jo Ann Gibson Robinson published 1987 

 

On the evening that Rosa Parks was arrested, Jo Ann Gibson Robinson began making plans for a boycott. She would become one of the most prominent leaders of the boycott. In her 1987 book "The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It" she writes about the daily humiliations African Americans encountered as they travelled on the buses. "Intermittently, twenty to twenty-five thousand black people in Montgomery rode city buses, and I would estimate that up until the boycott of December 5, 1955, about 3 out of 5 had suffered some unhappy experience on the public transit lines." 

 

On Monday, December 5, 1955 Rosa Parks an African American woman who had been arrested on Thursday, December 1, 1955 was put on trial for refusing to give up her seat in the “Colored” section of a Montgomery City bus to a White man. The White supremacist Jim Crow law demanded that African Americans give up their seats in the “Colored” section of buses to White passengers if there were no vacant seats in the “White” section of buses. When a White man could not find a seat in the “White” section of the bus the driver insisted that Parks and the other 3 African American passengers give up their seats for the White man. The others gave up their seats (at that point the White man had his choice of 3 seats) and Parks refused. The police were called and Parks was arrested. The arrest of National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) secretary Rosa Parks was the "last straw" and time for African Americans to demand better treatment from bus drivers in Montgomery, Alabama. 

 

Parks was the third African American woman arrested in 1955 for refusing to give up her seat on the Montgomery City bus. On March 2, 1955 Claudette Colvin a 15 year old African American was dragged out of a Montgomery city bus and arrested for refusing to give up her seat in the "Colored" section of the bus to a White man who could not find a seat in the crowded "White" section of the bus. On October 21, 1955, Louise Smith, an 18-year-old African American woman suffered a similar fate. Concerns were expressed by some of the religious and respectable members of the African American leadership about supporting the 2 young African American women. The teenage Colvin was pregnant and not married and it was mentioned by one of the fine upstanding religious African American leaders that Smith’s father had been seen in a drunken state in his front yard. Respectability politics in the African American community delayed the boycott by several years; there was abuse of African Americans before December 1955.  

 

On August 12, 1950 Hilliard Brooks a 23-year-old African American who had served in the US army during WWII boarded a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, paid at the front of the bus. Instead of disembarking and entering through the back-door Brooks bravely walked through the "whites only" section of the bus to the "colored" section of the bus. The bus driver demanded that Brooks get off the bus for breaking the law which demanded that African Americans enter through the back door. Brooks refused to leave the bus unless the bus driver returned his fare. The bus driver refused to return Brooks’ bus fare and instead called the police who kicked Brooks off the bus and when Brooks did not stay down, the police, M.E. Mills shot him dead on the spot. 

 In 1953, Mrs. Epsie Worthy got on a bus at a transfer point from another bus and the driver refused to take the transfer, demanding an additional fare. Mrs. Worthy decided to walk the rest of the way instead of paying an additional fare. The driver was determined that Mrs. Worthy would pay that additional fare even if she did not ride on his bus. The driver jumped off the bus and began physically assaulting Mrs. Worthy, who fought back “with all her might.” Jo Ann Gibson Robinson wrote that: “For a few minutes there was a ‘free-for-all’ and she gave as much as she took.” The police broke up the fight but only Mrs. Worthy was charged with disorderly conduct, jailed and fined fifty-two dollars. The driver was not sanctioned.  

HILLIARD BROOKS

 

A quote from chapter 3 of the 1999 published “Gender in the Civil Rights Movement” addressing “Respectability, class and gender in the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Early Civil Rights Movement” explains the decision not to support 18 year old Louise Smith: “When E.D. Nixon went to her house he reputedly ‘found her daddy in front of his shack barefoot and drunk.’ Nixon duly rejected Smith, not simply for her actual lower-class background, but because of her links, in Nixon’s view, with all manner of dissolute lower-class black stereotypes - a drunken father, an unkempt house.” E.D. Nixon was the President of the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP and Rosa Parks was the secretary. When Parks was arrested the leaders of the African American community decided she was the ideal person to support in their fight to demand better treatment on the Montgomery City buses. Parks was middle aged, educated, employed and married, there were no skeletons in her closet that the White media could use to criticize/denigrate the campaign. 

 

Thankfully, in 2020 with the rise of “Black Lives Matter,” respectability politics is mostly a thing of the past. White media cannot dictate who is supported by our community, even when they go to great lengths to denigrate/vilify the victims of police brutality. 

 

Murphy Browne © December 1, 2020