Carter Woodson Google Doodle. (Google 2018)
WITHOUT THE work of Carter G. Woodson, Google would probably not be kicking off Black History Month on Thursday, let alone with its home-page image of Woodson himself.
Woodson is historic because he believed in the illuminating power of the historic. He knew that tradition must be rightly learned before it can be valued, and that even then, society might try to devalue you and push you to the back of history’s warehouse.
As a real-world example of such undervaluation, consider the historic “office-home” of Woodson in Washington, at 1538 Ninth St. NW — just blocks from the White House as well as The Washington Post.
On The Post’s site, you can even see rare footage of Woodson — a.k.a. “the father of black history” — sitting at his desk long ago in his Ninth Street home, looking much as he does in Thursday’s Google Doodle.
Yet in a city chockablock with burnished monuments, Woodson’s Washington home was allowed to fall into a dilapidated state. As the president of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History wrote in a letter to The Post in the summer, Woodson’s D.C. home was among 30 memorials honoring the African American experience that were “subject to the ravages of deferred maintenance.” (That letter championed the bipartisan National Park Service Act to secure repair funding.)
The former “office-home” of author-historian Carter G. Woodson, a National Historic Landmark at 1538 Ninth Street NW in Washington. (Mark Gail/The Washington Post)
Consider that this home was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1976, and that it was placed on the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s list of endangered properties 17 years ago.
Then consider that it was precisely here that the precursor to Black History Month was born, after Woodson eyed February for a celebration, as Google notes, “to commemorate the birth months of abolitionist Frederick Douglass and President Abraham Lincoln.”
Woodson, according to the National Park Service, bought the home in 1922, for $8,000. And it was here that Woodson — this Virginia-born son of former slaves who wrote more than 20 books and hundreds of essays — created “Negro History Week,” the precursor to the month-long national African American History Month, in 1926.
That was the same decade that many future scholars, historians and authors began to be hired or mentored here, including such Harlem Renaissance figures as Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston. And for half a century, till 1971, the home would also serve as headquarters for the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History.
And Woodson, who was born Dec. 19, 1875, in nearby Buckingham County, Va., would die in this home, in his third-floor bedroom, in 1950, having traveled many roads and multiple continents along his path to changing how the world sees and values African American history. Because “those who have no record of what their forebears have accomplished,” Woodson famously said, “lose the inspiration which comes from the teaching of biography and history.”
Thursday’s Doodle is by Shannon Wright, an illustrator and comics creator [“8 Ways to Resist Donald Trump”] who has Virginia ties herself; she grew up in Fredericksburg and lives in Richmond. The art was created in collaboration with the Black Googlers Network.
“One thing about Dr. Woodson that inspires me, especially as I created this art,” Wright tells The Washington Post’s Comic Riffs, “was his diligence to create the content he wanted to see and acknowledged in the world.”
This post has been updated.
Read more:
Edmonia Lewis: Google Doodle salutes pioneering sculptor to kick off 2017’s Black History Month
The rediscovered legacy of Jackie Ormes, the first black woman with a syndicated comic strip
