Our school is named in honor of Dr. Carter Godwin Woodson, an author, historian, and scholar who has been called the “father of Black history.” Carter G. Woodson was born in 1875, in Buckingham County, Virginia, to James Woodson and Anne Riddle, who were former slaves. As a teenager, Carter Woodson worked on the family farm and in the coal mines of West Virginia to support his family. Largely self-taught, Woodson entered high school at age 20, and went on to obtain advanced degrees from the University of Chicago and Harvard University.

During his education, Woodson became keenly aware of disparities in the teaching of history. He noted that the contributions of Black Americans were “overlooked, ignored, and even suppressed by the writers of history textbooks and the teachers who use them.” Woodson realized that for Black history to be preserved, a new institutional structure to empower its study had to be created. With grant funding, Carter G. Woodson founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History in 1915. The following year, he began publishing the Journal of Negro History, and, in 1926, he launched Negro History Week. Held in February to coincide with the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, this annual observance of Black history was later expanded to Black History Month.

During his lifetime, Woodson authored many influential works, including The Negro in Our History in 1922 and The Mis-Education of the Negro in 1933. Carter G. Woodson died in 1950, in Washington, D.C., at age 74, and was buried at Lincoln Memorial Cemetery in Suitland, Maryland. His home at 1538 Ninth Street, NW, is now a national historic site curated by the National Park Service.