Welcome to Brainstuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff, lauring bog obaum here. America has officially celebrated Black History Month since February of nineteen seventy six, when President Gerald R. Ford established it as a national observance in an address that lauded its founder, African American historian Dr. Carter G. Woodson, and the quote impressive contributions of Black Americans to our national life and culture. But why February wasn't chosen willy nilly?
Or does February have special significance? We owe the celebration of Black History Month to Woodson, who made it his life's work to increase public awareness of African American history and culture. Known as the Father of Black History, this son of former slaves worked his way out of the Kentucky coal mines to become a Harvard educated historian and journalist.
Disheartened to discover that history books excluded the Black experience of American life beyond ways that portrayed black people as socially inferior, he took on the challenge of writing a proud, out and true African American history into America's national consciousness. Woodson wrote those who have no record of what their forebears have accomplished lose the inspiration which comes from the
teaching of biography and history. With that in mind, in nineteen fifteen, he founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life in History now the Association for the Study of African American Life and History and the Seminal Journal of Negro History in nineteen sixteen, later renamed the Journal of African American History. In February of nineteen twenty six, he introduced the celebration of negroh History Week as a way to shine a light on the myriad contributions of
black people throughout American history. Woodson and the Association chose the second week in February to launch the celebratory week because it coincided with the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln, whose eighteen sixty three Emancipation Proclamation and its slavery and Frederick Douglas, the former slave turned social reformer who became a national
force in the abolitionist movement. Other February events of historical merit included the birth of civil rights icon W. E. B. Du Bois and the passing of the Fifteenth Amendment on February third, eighteen seventy, which recognized the right of African American men to vote. The notion of expanding the week to a month evolved over the decades leading up to and during the Civil Rights movement of the nineteen sixties.
Freedom schools in the South incorporated the week into their curricula, and by the mid nineteen sixties, many colleges and universities across the country began to transform the week long event into a month long celebration on their campuses. Leaders of the Black United Students Organization at Kent State University proposed expanding it to a month, and in nineteen seventy they celebrated Black History Month for the first time on their campus.
By the time President Ford made it a national observance in nineteen seventy six, many mayors had already endorsed it as a municipal celebration. Each iteration of the event since its inception in ninety six has had a specific theme, as stated by the association, The theme for twenty is African Americans and the Vote, marking the one and fiftieth Anniverse three of the Fifteenth Amendment and the one anniversary of the nineteenth amendment by which women gained the vote
as well. This year's theme honors the struggles and triumphs of black citizens and elected officials in securing access to these rights and highlights the importance of the vote in this an important election year. Today's episode was written by Carrie Tatro and produced by Tyler Clang. Brain Stuff is production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more on this and lots of other topics, visit our home planet,
how stuff Works dot com. And for more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.