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"Famous Americans": The Changing Pantheon of American Heroes
Sam Wineburg and Chauncey Monte-Sano
| Meeting at the Wabash Avenue Young Men's Christian Association on Chicago's South Side on September 9, 1915, four African American men laid the foundation for the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (ASNLH), the first scholarly society promoting black culture and history in America. The force behind that initiative was Carter G. Woodson, the only black of slave parentage to earn a history Ph.D. from Harvard University. A tireless institution builder, Woodson not only kept the asnlh afloat through years of financial uncertainty, but also established the Journal of Negro History in 1916 and served as its editor until his death in 1950. Woodson authored and edited scores of publications—scholarly monographs, textbooks, pamphlets, newsletters, circulars, and reports—all aimed at spreading knowledge about blacks' contributions to American history. Yet, even more than his prodigious list of publications, the initiative for which Woodson is best known was inspired by a trend in the 1920s when civic organizations would devote weeks of the calendar to promote special causes, such as Boy Scout Week, Clean-Up Week, or Good Health Week. In 1926, Woodson designated the week in February that included the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln (February 12) and Frederick Douglass (February 14) as "Negro History Week."1 |
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Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, black America celebrated Negro History Week with speeches, parades, and educational events. But not until the 1960s did white America take much notice. During the 1940s and 1950s, mainstream textbooks virtually ignored black Americans except in their faceless guise as slaves. "Blacks were never treated as a group at all," wrote Frances FitzGerald. "They were quite literally invisible." Textbook narratives of the 1940s and 1950s described the population of the United States with the clause "leaving aside the Negro and Indian population"—and did just that.2 |
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Much would change with the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. By 1967 the educator and historian Larry Cuban wrote about a "deluge" of curriculum materials on black history flooding the schools. At the nation's bicentennial celebration, President Gerald R. Ford invoked Woodson in a proclamation making February "Black History Month," citing the "too-often neglected accomplishments of black Americans in every area of endeavor throughout our history." Indeed, Black History Month has become a fixture in the school calendar, often more prominent than the homogenized birthdays of George Washington and Lincoln. The month-long commemoration has become the model for other groups to gain access to the school curriculum, with lesson plans and educational kits backed by congressional resolutions and presidential declarations.3 |
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Black History Month still reigns as the crowning example of curricular change, recognized by school celebrations and assemblies, civic commemorations, billboard notices, and television documentaries. Entire generations of Americans have studied textbooks that are a far cry from those FitzGerald lambasted. In 1974, the National Council for the Social Studies inaugurated the Carter G. Woodson Book Award to encourage "the writing, publishing, and dissemination of outstanding social science books for young readers that treat topics related to ethnic minorities and relations sensitively and accurately."4 No one scanning the shelves of the "youth biography" section of a school or public library can miss the shift in titles now offered to young people. |
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