How the founder of Black History Month rebutted white racism in a forgotten manuscript

On a hot summer afternoon in 2005, Daryl Michael Scott, a history professor at Howard University, found himself sorting through 90 years’ worth of boxes and piles of paper, looking for original copies of “The Mis-Education of the Negro,” the classic 1933 book by Carter G. Woodson.

Woodson, a historian, scholar and educator known as the “father of black history,” spent his life advocating for scholarly research, study and publication of works about the African American experience. In 1926, Woodson created Negro History Week to celebrate the birthdays of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln, both in February. The week later became Negro History Month, then Black History Month.

“If a race has no history,” Woodson once wrote, “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.”