How Black History Month took shape from scholarship to national observance

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By Alexander Fernandez

Life News Today Reporter

In the summer of 1915, thousands of African Americans stood outside Chicago’s Coliseum waiting their turn to enter a three-week exposition marking the fiftieth anniversary of emancipation. Inside were exhibits documenting what Black Americans had built since slavery’s destruction. Outside were crowds six to twelve thousand deep, drawn not by spectacle but by recognition.

Among the exhibitors was Carter G. Woodson, a Harvard-trained historian who saw in those lines of people something larger than a commemoration. He saw public readiness for Black history to be treated as evidence, scholarship and record. At the time, the word “Negro” was the accepted and formal term used in organizational names and publications. This article uses the term only when referring to the official historical names of Woodson’s organization, publications, and observances.

Before leaving Chicago, Woodson resolved to give that readiness structure. On Sept. 9, 1915, at the Wabash YMCA, he and colleagues founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History. A year later, he created “The Journal of Negro History,” establishing a place where research on Black life could be published, preserved and taught.

Woodson believed Black history should not rely on folklore or celebration alone. It should be documented and studied with the same rigor as any other field. Woodson understood early that scholarship without distribution would not change public understanding. By the early 1920s, he urged civic groups, churches, schools and fraternities to help carry the findings into classrooms and communities. Members of Omega Psi Phi answered first in 1924 with “Negro History” (NH) and Literature Week. Woodson wanted a broader, coordinated effort that provided themes, materials and a national rhythm educators could follow. In 1926, the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (ASNLH) announced “Negro History Week” (NHW) in February.

 Woodson knew Black communities had long marked the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. By building on those existing commemorations, he asked the public to extend its study of Black history rather than invent a new tradition. At the same time, he pushed the focus beyond individual figures. Woodson argued that history was made by people and communities, by workers, teachers, soldiers and families whose contributions rarely reached textbooks. The response spread quickly as schools formed history clubs, teachers requested lesson plans and posters, and cities issued proclamations in support of Negro History Week and the broader study of Black history.

ASNLH supplied annual themes, study guides and materials that reached classrooms nationwide. In 1937, urged by Mary McLeod Bethune, an influential educator and national Black civic leader, Woodson launched the Negro History Bulletin to support educators tied to those themes. As interest grew, Woodson worried about dilution. He warned teachers about “instant experts” and criticized shallow presentations that replaced scholarship with spectacle.

He pressed for standards because he believed Black history deserved the same academic care as any other subject. Importantly, he never viewed NHW as confinement. He spoke openly about a future “Negro History Year,” where Black history would be integrated into daily education rather than confined to a week. In the 1940s and 1950s, Black teachers in the South often supplemented United States history lessons with Woodson’s materials, a practice described in later accounts as discreet efforts to avoid retaliation from school administrators.

During the Civil Rights Movement, "Freedom Schools" which were community-run, grassroots schools created during the Civil Rights Movement to educate Black children and adults in places where public education was segregated, incorporated Black history into curriculum as part of civic education and social change. Even before Woodson’s death in 1950, some communities had begun observing the entire month of February as “Negro History Month” (NHM). By the late 1960s, on college campuses and in communities nationwide, Black History Month (BHM) began replacing Negro History Week.

Cultural leaders such as Fredrick H. Hammaurabi in Chicago promoted month-long observances linking African consciousness to historical study. Younger scholars inside Woodson’s organization pushed it to evolve with the times. In 1976, 50 years after the first NHW, the association, now renamed the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, formally institutionalized the shift from a week to a month and from “Negro history” to “Black history.”

That same year, Gerald Ford issued the first presidential BHM message urging Americans to recognize the accomplishments of Black citizens. Since then, presidents from both parties have issued annual proclamations endorsing ASALH’s annual Black history observance. The year 1976 did not create BHM, it formalized and legitimized what communities and educators had been building for decades. Woodson’s original standard still defines the observance. He wanted evidence over stereotype, scholarship over symbolism, and education over ceremony. February was meant to focus attention, but the purpose was always integration into everyday understanding of American history.

In Washington, D.C., during the week of Feb. 9 to Feb. 16, that vision is visible in practice. At the National Museum of African American History and Culture, visitors move through exhibits grounded in documented history spanning slavery, reconstruction, civil rights, arts, science and military service. At the Martin Luther King Jr Memorial, guided programs connect historical movements to present civic engagement. D.C. public libraries host readings and lectures that mirror Woodson’s early classroom materials.

On campuses like Howard University, panels and discussions connect historical scholarship to present-day issues. From a crowded exposition hall in Chicago, to a YMCA meeting room, to classrooms across the country, to national recognition in 1976, BHM grew from scholarship to movement to institution. What began as NHW became BHM by expansion, not replacement. And each February, the connection between Woodson’s first exhibit and today’s public programs remains evident, reflecting his belief that Black history belongs within the broader study of American history and public life.