Related Resources at the Library
Welcome from the Librarian of Congress
Greetings from the Library of Congress, the nation's oldest federal cultural institution, the research arm of Congress and the largest library in the world. The Library is acknowledged as a leading resource for the study of the African American experience from the colonial period to the present. The Library's collections include the plays of Zora Neale Hurston, pamphlets from such notables as Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington and the narratives of former slaves.
In celebration of African American History Month, the Library will sponsor a series of special events and has developed this Web site highlighting the many resources on African-American history and culture available from our extensive online collections.
This annual celebration is one of the ways in which the Library heightens awareness and recognizes the contributions of African Americans to our nation. This year's theme, "Carter G. Woodson and the Origins of Multiculturalism," honors the founding father of African American History Month, who paved the way for the study and celebration of the black tradition. The Library of Congress is also the repository for his papers.
On behalf of the many thousands of dedicated Library of Congress staff, I invite you to the Library in Washington, D.C., for a series of special events related to the month-long celebration of African American History Month, including a signature event highlighting the Library's recently acquired National Visionary Leadership Project (NVLP) Collection of African American Oral Histories.
The Library's month-long celebration will help demonstrate, as has the life's work of Carter Woodson, that African-American history is an indelible and intrinsic part of American history.
James H. Billington
Librarian of Congress
African American History Month
As a Harvard-trained historian, Carter G. Woodson, like W. E. B. Du Bois before him, believed that truth could not be denied and that reason would prevail over prejudice. His hopes to raise awareness of African American's contributions to civilization was realized when he and the organization he founded, the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (ASNLH), conceived and announced Negro History Week in 1925. The event was first celebrated during a week in February 1926 that encompassed the birthdays of both Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. The response was overwhelming: Black history clubs sprang up; teachers demanded materials to instruct their pupils; and progressive whites, not simply white scholars and philanthropists, stepped forward to endorse the effort.
By the time of Woodson's death in 1950, Negro History Week had become a central part of African American life and substantial progress had been made in bringing more Americans to appreciate the celebration. At mid–century, mayors of cities nationwide issued proclamations noting Negro History Week. The Black Awakening of the 1960s dramatically expanded the consciousness of African Americans about the importance of black history, and the Civil Rights movement focused Americans of all color on the subject of the contributions of African Americans to our history and culture.
The celebration was expanded to a month in 1976, the nation's bicentennial. President Gerald R. Ford urged Americans to “seize the opportunity to honor the too-often neglected accomplishments of black Americans in every area of endeavor throughout our history.” That year, fifty years after the first celebration, the association held the first African American History Month. By this time, the entire nation had come to recognize the importance of Black history in the drama of the American story. Since then each American president has issued African American History Month proclamations. And the association—now the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH)—continues to promote the study of Black history all year.
Information from an essay by Daryl Michael Scott, Howard University, for the Association for the Study of African American Life and History
About This Year's Theme:
Carter G. Woodson and the Origins of Multiculturalism
The Association for the Study of African American Life and History
From its inception, America has been a landscape peopled by diverse ethnic and racial groups, and today virtually all peoples are represented. During the early years of the 20th century, a small number of intellectuals began to question whether America was simply a transplant of English civilization. W. E. B. Du Bois, Theodore Herzel and Randolph Bourne believed that modern America should embrace the cultural differences that newcomers brought with them to America. Democracy, they believed, required tolerance of difference and could sustain those differences in harmony.
Among those intellectuals, Carter G. Woodson did most to forge an intellectual movement to educate Americans about cultural diversity and democracy. For the sake of African Americans and all Americans, Woodson heralded the contributions of African Americans and the black tradition. In 1915, he established the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History and by the time of his death in 1950, he had laid the foundation for a rethinking of American identity. The multiculturalism of our times is built on the intellectual and institutional labors of Woodson and the association he established.
In honor of its founder, the Association for the Study of African American Life and History devotes the 2008 annual African American History Month theme to both the labors of Woodson and the origins of multiculturalism.