It is sad that in 2023, we still do not have a “Collected Works of Carter G. Woodson.” Such a series would be a tremendous undertaking, to be sure, but surely worthwhile. Woodson was one of the pioneers of Black history, a trailblazer and mentor for a whole generation of Black historians, and yet so much of his work remains tucked away in archives. Frederick Douglass has had a host of scholars working on his papers; Booker T. Washington had Louis Harlan; Du Bois had Aptheker (and Partington!); Francis Grimké had Carter Woodson himself; but Woodson’s works remain scattered. This series of posts is one small effort to remedy that and to make some of Woodson’s work more accessible.
“During the 1930s and 1940s, Woodson wrote several hundred essays in leading black newspapers such as the New York Age, the Pittsburgh Courier from Pennsylvania, the Afro-American from Baltimore, Maryland, and the Chicago Defender.” (Pero Dagbovie, “Carter G. Woodson (1875-1950)” BlackPast)
Some of these essays would be collected and published as Woodson’s most famous work, The Mis-Education of the Negro (1933). But there were many, many more. Unfortunately, many of these articles have not even been catalogued, let alone made available. I began this project with 150 articles from the New York Age (Carter G. Woodson in the New York Age, 1931–1938), 33 articles in the Pittsburgh Courier (Carter G. Woodson in the Pittsburgh Courier, 1931–1940); 25 articles from the Cleveland Call and Post (Carter G. Woodson in the Cleveland Call and Post, 1938–1947), and now this post collects 158 articles from the Baltimore Afro-American.
Scholarship on Woodson’s newspaper articles is scarce. Mary Anthony Scally’s Carter G. Woodson: A Bio-Bibliography does not list any articles from the Baltimore Afro-American. Jacqueline Goggin’s book does cite the Afro-American dozens of times, but contains no listing of articles. A recent study by Burnis R. Morris lists over 200 articles by Woodson, and contains a total of 12 articles from the Afro-American (see Carter G. Woodson: History, the Black Press, and Public Relations (2017). Baiyina W. Muhammad has a fascinating paper called “The Baltimore Afro American’s Pan African Consciousness Agenda, 1915-1941,” in The Journal of Pan African Studies, 4.5, September 2011 (available here) which mentions Woodson, as well as W. E. B Du Bois and Rayford Logan.
I’ve done as exhaustive of a search as I can, and have found 158 articles, and am making them available here, many of which for the first time. Almost all of these articles are available on GoogleBooks “Newspapers.” Links are set to take readers to the particular page of the article.
The Baltimore Afro-American
The Baltimore Afro-American was founded in 1892 and is “the longest-running African-American family-owned newspaper in the United States, established in 1892” (Wikipedia). Carl Murphy (1889–1967) served as editor from 1922 until 1961, including during the years that Woodson contributed articles (Robert Stirling, “Carl Murphy (1889–1967), at BlackPast).
Without further ado, here’s Carter G. Woodson in the Baltimore Afro-American (for those who prefer, a pdf of all the links is also available):
1926
February 13, 1926. “Negro was first to discover America, he taught modern world to use iron”
February 20, 1926. “School Books Give “False” History Ideas”
1931
February 7, 1931. “Thomas Jesse Jones Accused of Writing Underhanded Letters Against Association”
February 21, 1931. “U. S. Slave Traders Handled $150,000,000 in Nefarious Game in 1859 and 1860”
February 28, 1931. “‘Can’ Shakespeare, Caesar and Napoleon for the Study of African Heroes—Woodson”
March 7, 1931. “Woodson Says White College Heads Close Their Homes to Alumni and Students”
March 14, 1931. “College ‘Darkter’s’ Degree Seekers Cannot Even Pronounce the Words, Says Woodson”
March 21, 1931. “Filipinos Wouldn’t Take to the Story of George Washington, Says Woodson”
March 28, 1931. “The ‘Highly Educated’ Quickly Graduate from the Methodist and Baptist Churches”
April 4, 1931. “People of the West Indies Have Less Slave Psychology Than We”
April 11, 1931. “Whites Plan to Exterminate Tribes and Make Africa White Man’s Country”
April 18, 1931. “Political Professors Make H.U. Presidency a Hard Job to Hold After Four Years”
April 25, 1931. “Legal Research at H.U. Law School is Confined to Sniping at Dr. Johnson”
May 2, 1931. “Dr. Woodson Explains Inside ‘Dope’ on the Scott-Johnson Rift at Howard University”
May 9, 1931. “Southern States Eliminate U.S. Constitution from School Textbooks, Says Dr. Woodson”
May 16, 1931. “Colleges Training Students for Business, Have Not Made a Success, Says Woodson”
May 23, 1931. “The Scott-Johnson Duel at Howard University Goes On”
May 30, 1931. “White Christianity Greatest Farce in Modern Times, Says Woodson”
June 6, 1931. “You Can’t Run Big Business Until You Learn to Run Hundreds of Little Ones”
June 13, 1931. “One-Tenth of Federal Jobs Should Come to Us, Declares Dr. Carter Woodson”
June 20, 1931. “Some Ministers Agree that Darrow is Partly Correct in Criticizing the Church”
July 4, 1931. “Historian Sees Danger in Political Activity of Howard Univ. Official”
July 11, 1931. “High School Orators Think That Becoming Great is Quite an Easy Task”
July 18, 1931. “Only the Trail Blazer Succeeds in Business, says Dr. Carter Woodson”
July 25, 1931. “Woodson Wants Political Leaders Jailed or Either Sent to Lunatic Asylum”
August 1, 1931. “Be Radical for Your Own Cause Instead Of Foreigners, Woodson”
August 8, 1931. “Stay Away From the ‘Big Policeman,’ Says Woodson”
August 15, 1931. “Union of All Churches Needed, Asserts Woodson”
August 22, 1931. “Church is Primarily Avenue of White Man’s Propaganda”
August 29, 1931. “Woodson Discusses Difficulties in Way of United Church”
September 12, 1931. “Twelve Bishops Enough for All U. S. Churches—Woodson”
September 19, 1931. “Lack of Church Union Accounts for the Preacher in Politics”
September 26, 1931. “Dr. Woodson Reports Racketeering in Wine Used on Communion Table”
October 3, 1931. “Some Schools of Theology Should Reorganize as Asylums—Woodson”
October 10, 1931. “Honest Pastors Suffer Because of Incompetents in Pulpit”
October 17, 1931. “30 More Colored Church Denominations Than White, United States’ Census Shows”
October 24, 1931. “Post Civil War White Pastors were Degenerate—Woodson”
October 31, 1931. “West Indian Contribution to U.S. to be Studied When Historians Meet”
November 7, 1931. “West Indian Racial Purity an Advantage in Race Consciousness”
November 14, 1931. “Carter Woodson Flouts Idea of Racial Advancement: Racial Achievement in U.S. Not Worthy of Trumpeting”
November 21, 1931. “Carter Woodson Defines Modern Idea of Urban Community—Scarlet Lady, Bootlegger Live by Dr. Woodson, But are not his Neighbors”
November 28, 1931. “Dr. Johnson Sees No Hope in Liberia Under Present Regime—History Association Hears that Government in Liberia Has Failed”
December 5, 1931. “Dr. Woodson Wonders How Bishops Lay Up So Much Treasure—Bishops of the Church Die Rich, says Dr. Woodson, Hinting at Corruption“
December 12, 1931. “George Washington Bi-Centennial Commission Has Colored Sideshow”
December 19, 1931. “Geo. Washington Bi-Centennial Play Displays the Race Hate of Early Days“
December 26, 1931. “Woodson Raps One-Sided Celebration of Bi-Centennial—Dr. Woodson Attacks Proposed Jim Crow Geo. Washington Bicentennial”
1932
January 2, 1932. “George Washington Bi-Centennial Eliminates Crispus Attucks Day”
January 9, 1932. “American Blacks of 200 Years Ago Bolder Than People of Our Day”
January 23, 1932. “Woodson Thinks Men of 100 Years Ago Were More Outspoken Against Wrongs”
January 30, 1932. “Ofay Bosses Have Long Told Workers Their Own Leaders Were No Good”
February 6, 1932. “Penny Apiece Should be Sent History Association During ‘History Week’”
February 13, 1932. “Dr. Woodson Tells Why Thoughtless People Laugh at The Wrong Place in Theatres”
February 27, 1932.“Depression, Says Woodson, Makes Us Depend Upon Ourselves”
March 5, 1932. “Every Community Has its Peculiar Rivalries, Says Dr. Carter Woodson”
March 12, 1932. “Ofay Changed Dining Table on Liner to Avoid ‘Nigger’—We Need to Invent a Method to Combat Derogation and Insult”
March 19, 1932. “Carter Woodson Sees Youth Breaking Away From Traditions”
March 26, 1932. “Depression Bringing Us to Normal Spending, Says Woodson—No Depression Exists, Says Dr. Woodson’ Merely a Return to Normal Times”
April 2, 1932. “Good Will Come Out of Low Economic Conditions, Writer Says—Must Not Let the Depression Depress Us, Says Woodson”
April 9, 1932. “Washington a Job Seeking and Job Holding Center, Says Dr. Woodson”
April 16, 1932. “Not Hard to Get Out of the Bread Line, Says Dr. Carter Woodson”
April 23, 1932. “Harvard, Columbia, Princeton Education Has Little Use for Our Students”
April 30, 1932. “Teachers Accept Assignment Ofays Give Negro—Woodson—Professor Bonehead Doesn’t Teach Negro History in Ham Fat University”
May 7, 1932. “Little Use to Learn Tailoring, Shoe-Making in Schools Now—Woodson”
May 14, 1932. “Nannie Burroughs’s School Fills a Real Need, Says Dr. Woodson”
May 21, 1932. “Modern Education Fits the Needs of Oppressors of Weaker Peoples”
May 28, 1932. “We Lose Most by Failure of Other People’s Business Concerns”
June 4, 1932. “Segregation in “Y’.s” Has Developed Into the Worst Sort”
June 11, 1932. “Harpers Ferry President Should be Forced to Leave Storer, Dr. Woodson Says”
June 18, 1932. “American Dictionary of Biography Another of those Things, says Woodson”
June 25, 1932. “Y. W. C. A. Promotes Race Segregation in the Name of God, Says Woodson”
July 2, 1932. “Dr. Woodson Tells Why Race Segregation Must Finally Fail”
July 9, 1932. “Thomas Jesse Jones Termed Undesirable; Disapproved by Booker T. Washington”
July 16, 1932. “White Church and Y.M.C.A. are Anti-Christian from Jesus’s Point of View”
July 30, 1932. “Segregation is the Cause of Most of the Ills We Suffer in this Country”
August 6, 1932. “American Under Segregation Policies Sure to Fail, says Dr. Carter Woodson”
August 13, 1932. “Let Us Use Segregation to Kill Segregation, Says Dr. Woodson”
August 20, 1932. “Beware of Leaders, What We Need Now is Workers, Says Dr. Woodson”
August 27, 1932. “White Heads of Colored Colleges Should be “Naturalized,” Says Dr. Woodson”
September 3, 1932. “Political Leaders Have Led Backward Rather than Forward.”
- (NOTE: This page says “August 27, 1932” at the top, but this appears to be a misprint, as every other page in the paper says “September 3,” and the August 27, 1932 issue had another article printed in it”
September 10, 1932. “Balance of Power is Sole Political Strength of Group“
September 17, 1932. “Handkerchief-Headed Political Leaders Got Little for Masses out of Politics”
September 24, 1932. “Dr. Woodson in Europe Looking Through Great Libraries for Studies on Africa”
October 1, 1932. “Dr. Carter Woodson Finds Dollar Most Popular Thing in France Today“
October 8, 1932. “25 Years of European Democracy Does Not Impress Carter Woodson”
October 15, 1932. “Historian to Discuss Segregation at Atlanta Meeting November Thirteenth”
October 29, 1932. “Dr. Carter Woodson Argues for Wider Use of the Word “Negro” in Print”
November 19, 1932. “Lincoln Practical Man Says Woodson, Who Did Things We Condemn Today”
November 26, 1932. “All Eyes on Well Dressed Black Woman in Capital Street Car”
December 3, 1932. “Dr. Carter Woodson Thinks He Would Like to Live Way Down in Atlanta, Ga.”
December 10, 1932. “Majority of Educators Favor History Week Celebrations in Schools”
December 17, 1932. “What Our Women Can Do to People Who Use the Word “Negress” Derisively”
December 24, 1932. “Woodson Finds Many Churches and Schools Without Pictures”
December 31, 1932. “Dr. Carter Woodson Finds Union Station Red Caps Have a “Queen””
1933
January 7, 1933. Dr. Woodson Says His Salary is Less Than Thirty Dollars Per Week”
January 14, 1933. “Dr. Carter Woodson’s Columns in The Afro Collected in Book Form”
January 28, 1933. “Friday, 13th, Unlucky to Carter Woodson, Who is Held Up and Robbed”
February 4, 1933. “Woodson Raps Separate Arrangements For the Roosevelt Inauguration”
February 11, 1933. “Woodson Suggests Tightening Up on Jim Crow Artists Like Harrison, Hayes”
February 18, 1933. “A New Story of George Washington and the Negro”
February 25, 1933. “Woodson Launches an Attack on Kelly Miller and G. David Houston”
March 4, 1933. “Carter Woodson tells of History Tour Through Louisiana and Texas”
1934
February 3, 1934. “White Educators Claim to See Problem from New Angle”
February 10, 1934. “Woodson Warns of History Written in the Superlative”
February 17, 1934. “Dr. Woodson Finds Readers Have Strange Ideas of History”
March 3, 1934. “Shall We Live in the City or Go Back to the Farm? Dr. Carter Woodson Asks”
March 10, 1934. “What’s Behind the Name of Your School? Joshua R. Giddings Faced Angry Congress,” p. 7.
March 17, 1934. “Bold Black Men Who Rose to Romantic Leadership in the Americas of 500 Years Ago,” p. 21.
March 24, 1934. “Dixie Libertines Thought Slave Men Didn’t Resent Raping of Their Women”
March 31, 1934. “Joseph Cinque Headed Slaves Who Captured Spanish Ship and Butchered All Its Crew”
April 7, 1934. “Camden, N.J., School Music Dept. Found New Reason to Bar Pupils from Opera”
April 14, 1934. “Federal “Advisors” Do Not Serve Race, Says Woodson”
April 21, 1934. “DuBois’s Segregation Views Irk Woodson, Who Tells Why”
December 1, 1934. “Early Africans Had High Place in Civilization”
1935
February 9, 1935. “Our Christianity Not Much Good Today, Historian Claims”
February 23, 1935. “Woodson Says He Was Misquoted on the Church”
July 27, 1935. “Dr. Woodson Launches Attack from Paris on Kelly Miller and Dr. DuBois“
August 17, 1935. “Woodson Says that Thomas J. Jones Called Him Radical”
December 7, 1935. “Drama Offers Unusual Possibilities, Says C. G. Woodson”
December 28, 1935. “History of Ethiopia is Vague, Says C. Woodson”
1936
January 18, 1936. “Woodson Compares Nordic Missionaries and Africans”
January 25, 1936. “On Living Standards”
April 4, 1936. “What Price Loyalty?”
April 25, 1936. “17th Woodson Book is Out”; “Continued From Page 1”
April 25, 1936. “Woodson O.K.’s F. D.; Rates Borah Low”
May 30, 1936. “Calls Du Bois a Traitor if He Accepts Post: He Told Ofays, We’d Write Own History”
- NOTE: the digitized version available on Google Books has another article layered on top of the headline and part of the article; only a portion of the article is available to read. See reference to the article in Henry Louis Gates and Kwame Appiah, “W.E.B. Du Bois and the Making of the Encyclopedia Africana, 1909–1963” at BlackPast.org)
June 6, 1936. “No $8,000-Job Offer—Woodson”
June 6, 1936. “Three Rival Brothers”
June 20, 1936. “New Encyclopedia Project Gets Slap from Woodson”
1937
February 13, 1937. “Asks Aid for History”
May 15, 1937. “Urges Support for Bethune-Cookman”
December 18, 1937. “Most U. S Heroes are Riffraff—Woodson”
1938
January 1, 1938. “British Made G. Washington About Face”
January 8, 1938. “Woodson Sees Drop in Colored Book Owners”
January 15, 1938. “Dr. Woodson Poses Seven Queries for History Week”
January 22, 1938. “Dixie Whites Study Negro History, Woodson Reports”
February 19, 1938. “History Asso. Asked Many a Queer Question”
March 19, 1938. “White Folks Honor You If You Stay on Lower Level”
March 26, 1938. “Two Women Make Good”
April 2, 1938. “Christianity Called Santa Claus Myth”
April 2, 1938. “Janitor Selected Woodson for College Prexy’s Job”
July 23, 1938. “Should Study People”
1940
January 27, 1940. “Woodson Says Fake Historians Exploit Us”
1941
March 29, 1941. “Dr. Carter G. Woodson” [picture]
July 26, 1941. “New Volume on Liberia Praised by Dr. Woodson”
1942
February 2, 1942. “Map History Body’s Membership Drive” [picture]
1944
June 24, 1944. “Terrell Law School Grads and Commencement Speaker” [picture]
1945
October 6, 1945. “Book Still in Demand” [picture]
1946
June 1, 1946. “To Get Degree” [picture]
June 15, 1946 “Commencements in Spotlight” [picture]
1947
February 1, 1947. “National Negro History Week Set for Feb. 9 to 16“
February 15, 1947. “Research and Romance were Incompatible” [interview with Woodson]
1948
February 7, 1948. “He Inaugurated History Week” [profile and picture]
1949
February 5, 1949. “February 6–12 Marks Annual History Week” [includes reading list]
1950
April 8, 1950. “District Pays Tribute to Dr. Carter Woodson”
βιβλιοσκώληξ 