Carter G. Woodson and Mary McLeod Bethune: The Teachers Behind Black History Month

Most of us remember a teacher who made us want to learn more. Dr. Carter G. Woodson and Mary McLeod Bethune were that kind of teacher. Friends who both lived in Washington, D.C., they helped create Negro History Week — known today as Black History Month — and before that, shaped the minds of young African Americans through a shared passion for education, equality and civic engagement.

Mary McLeod Bethune

Carter G. Woodson

Woodson knew that historians had ignored or misrepresented the role of African Americans, and devoted his life to setting the record straight. He founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History — today the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH) — believing that education and closer ties between Black and white Americans would reduce racism.

• Taught in Winona, West Virginia, then returned to his old high school as principal.
• Spent several years as a teacher and school supervisor in the Philippines for the War Department, where the failings of Filipino education convinced him to make education more relevant to Black Americans.
• In Washington, taught American history, English, French and Spanish at the M Street School (now Paul Laurence Dunbar Senior High School), and in 1918 became principal of the Armstrong Manual Training School.
• Served as dean of liberal arts at Howard University, then dean at West Virginia Collegiate Institute (now West Virginia State University), before leaving academia to give ASALH his full attention — though he never stopped teaching the public.

Joining forces

In 1936, Bethune became ASALH's first woman president. She urged Woodson to launch the Negro History Bulletin: the Journal of Negro History reached educated readers, but both wanted something everyday people — especially teachers and students — could use. The association would publish scholarship and primary sources other researchers could build on.

Woodson saw it as his duty to preserve documents, historical and current, on the Black experience, and to correct the racist biases in historical writing — above all the idea that Black people were mainly victims, rather than active shapers of American history.

Materials in the packing and shipping room of Woodson's home and office. Photo by the National Park Service

Their legacy

Both believed the future depended on educating young people well — including in the deeds of those who came before. Their friendship and teamwork remain an example. Who inspired you — and whom will you inspire?

Their homes are preserved as the Carter G. Woodson Home and Mary McLeod Bethune Council House national historic sites.

Sources

Based on "Black History Dream Team," National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain. The source's "Kindell Institute" is corrected to the Kendall Institute.