The Lesson Carter G. Woodson Still Has for America at 250

In 1926, Carter G. Woodson launched what was then called Negro History Week. It wasn’t meant as a celebration so much as a correction.

Woodson believed the United States was living with a dangerous distortion: Black Americans were central to the nation’s development, yet largely absent from the way its history was told. He understood the consequences of that omission. When a people are left out of the national story, it becomes easier to leave them out of classrooms, boardrooms, balance sheets, and corridors of power.