Woodson, Carter Godwin
(19 December 1875–03 April 1950)
- Jacqueline Goggin
Extract
Woodson, Carter Godwin (19 December 1875–03 April 1950), historian, was born in New Canton, Virginia, the son of James Henry Woodson, a sharecropper, and Anne Eliza Riddle. Woodson, the “Father of Negro History,” was the first and only black American born of former slaves to earn a Ph.D. in history. His grandfather and father, who were skilled carpenters, were forced into sharecropping after the Civil War. The family eventually purchased land and eked out a meager living in the late 1870s and 1880s....
