Carter G Woodson

Carter G. Woodson is known as the father of Black History. In 1915, he founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History. It was through this organization that he began pressing for a Negro History Week. Woodson chose the second week of February because two persons he felt had dramatically affected the lives of Black Americans were born during that month: Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. His tireless efforts succeeded in 1926.

It would be much later, in 1976, when the now-renamed Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History would succeed in promoting this week into Black History Month.