Carter Godwin Woodson,

1875—The man who would become recognized as the “Father of Black His­tory,” Carter Godwin Woodson, is born on this day in New Canton, Bucking­ham County, Va. Woodson founded the Washington, D.C.,-based Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History. He wrote hundreds of articles about Black history and published sev­eral books with the most widely circu­lated being “The Negro in Our History” and launched the information celebra­tion now known as Black History Month. His famous warning to African-Ameri­cans about the need to know and study Black history was, “Those who have no record of what their forebears have ac­complished lose the inspiration which comes from the teaching of biography and history.” Woodson died suddenly on April 3, 1950.