Carter G. Woodson in the Baltimore Afro-American, 1926–1950

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.

“Ask Dr. Langberg”: Diane Langberg’s columns in Today’s Christian Woman, 1988–2004

In September 1988, Today’s Christian Woman debuted a column titled “Ask Dr. Langberg.” Langberg was described as “a licensed clinical psychologist in private practice” and the author of Counsel for Pastor’s Wives which had just come out that year. This column would continue monthly for over 16 years, finishing at the end of 2004 at a total of 98 columns.

The column came to be described as “TCW‘s version of Dear Abby–only better, since she’s a licensed psychologist with a PhD, and the director of a group practice outside Philadelphia” (March-April 2000). Readers were invited to write in their questions and Dr. Langberg would answer them in her column. Occasionally, a particular column would prompt a letter from a reader in a subsequent issue, either appreciating her advice, or pushing back on what they felt was lacking. These letters have been noted [in brackets] in the list below.

The Writings of W. E. B. Du Bois, edited by Herbert Aptheker, 1969–1986

Before The Oxford W. E. B. Du Bois republished new editions of the 21 book “canon” of Du Bois in 19 volumes, there was the 40+ volume effort of Herbert Aptheker, published over a span of almost 20 years from 1969 to 1986. A thorough overview of Aptheker’s work was recently published in Phylon:

Phillip Luke Sinitiere, “‘Dr. Du Bois Gave Me Complete Access to His Papers’: Herbert Aptheker’s Editorial History with W.E.B. Du Bois’s Papers and Manuscripts,” Phylon 60.1 (2023): 3–36; available on JStor).

Sinitiere describes how “In late 1946 Du Bois asked Aptheker to edit his correspondence,” and when Du Bois moved to Ghana in 1961, he “deposited additional manuscript files at the Aptheker’s Brooklyn home” (“Aptheker’s Editorial History,” 4, 13). In an interesting reversal of future roles, Du Bois even wrote a preface for the first volume of Aptheker’s edited A Documentary History of the Negro People in the United States (1950) (available here). After Du Bois died in 1963, Aptheker edited Du Bois’s Autobiography, and in the early 1970s, “with Shirley Graham Du Bois’s support and endorsement” Aptheker reached agreements with the University of Massachusetts Press and the Kraus-Thomson Organization to bring Du Bois’s writings to publication (“Aptheker’s Editorial History,” 15). The result was over 40 volumes of material, most of it published from 1973–1986.