The Status of Black History in U.S. Schools and Society

The year 2015 marked a century since Carter G. Woodson and his colleagues created the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (originally ASNLH, now ASALH), the first Black history organization that successfully "promoted, researched, preserved, interpreted, and disseminated information about Black life, history, and culture to the global community." Woodson, with help from ASALH, had a profound impact on efforts to institutionalize Black history in schools. Between 1915 and 1950, Woodson and his colleagues established a foundation for K-12 Black history education. They did so by authoring several K-12 Black history textbooks, designing Black history home study courses for school-aged children, establishing a K-12 Black history teacher journal, and promoting Negro History Week (now Black History Month) in schools. Woodson envisioned these programs as temporary, and only the first steps at integrating K-12 Black history within the mainstream social studies curriculum.