The Father of Black History

He wrote 16 books on African-American history. In 1915, at Chicago, he founded the Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History. The next year he began publishing the Journal of Negro History, and in 1926 instituted Negro History Week (officially changed to Black History Month in 1976). He is the son of former slaves, born in 1875 at New Canton, Buckingham County, Virginia. He is known as the “father of black history.”

Self-taught in the school subjects of his time, Carter Goodwin Woodson labored in the coal fields of Fayette County Virginia until at the age of 20 he was able to enter Douglass High School in Huntington.

After graduating from Bera College, Kentucky, in 1901, Woodson, t came back to Douglas High School as its principal. Later, he would be a school supervisor in the Philippines, earn B. A. and M. A. degrees from the University of Chicago, and a Ph. D. in history from Harvard University, teach languages in Washington D. C. high schools, and become the Dean of the School of Liberal Arts at both Howard University and West Virginia State College. During a year of study in Asia and Europe and a semester at the Sorbonne Woodson would master several languages.

Given a grant to study the 1830 census wherein he found there were blacks who owned slaves convinced Woodson a need existed for special research into black history. He believed the neglect, ignorance and misrepresentation that had clouded the Negro’s past could be dispelled by scholarly works. “If a race has no history,” wrote Woodson, “if it has no worthwhile tradition, it becomes a negligible factor in the thought of the world, and it stands in danger of being exterminated.” Woodson set out to give his people an authentic history.

In 1915 Woodson published The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861. That book was followed by A Century of Negro Migration (1918), The History of the Negro Church (1927) and The Negro in Our History. This last book has gone through several editions and was revised by Charles Harris Wesley in 1950. It is considered “one of the finest full-length works on black history.” Among other works of Woodson’s are The Mind of the Negro as Reflected in Letters Written During the Crisis, 1900-1860, The African Background Outlined, and The Mis-Education of the Negro.

In 1920 Woodson organized the Associated Publishers for the purpose of putting into print books on African-American culture and history. The Negro History Bulletin first issued by Woodson in 1937 was created for elementary and high school teachers.

Woodson contemplated compiling a six-volume Encyclopedia Africana. He died in April 1950, before completing the project.

In 1992, the Library of Congress honored Dr. Woodson with an exhibition entitled “Moving Back Barriers: The Legacy of Carter G. Woodson.” The Library has a collection of 5,000 items from the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries donated by Woodson.

Dr. Woodson and W. E. B. DuBois, another Harvard graduate, are credited with laying the foundations of modern Afrocentric scholarship. Since its beginning, Afrocentricism has attracted numerous followers and much controversy. It has gained the support of the internationally authoritative Association For the Study of Classical African Civilizations.

Afrocentric scholarship denies its discourse is the product of flawed evidence or pseudoscience, and champions the concept of Africa as the birthplace of mankind and the wellspring of civilization. It argues that Anglo-European religion, philosophy and science has ignored, or consciously suppressed and distorted African heritage and its contribution to civilization’s progress. The role of Afrocentricism and Pan-Africanism is to restore Africans to their rightful place in world history.

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Among Anglo-European nineteenth century evolutionists there were, according to Stephan Jay Gould (The Mismeasure of Man), two modes of thinking about “racial ranking”: monogenism (from a single source), and polygenism (from many sources).

The single-source backers “upheld the scriptural unity of all peoples in the single creation of Adam and Eve. . . . Human races are a product of degeneration from Eden’s perfection. Races have declined to different degrees, whites least and blacks most.”

The many-sources advocates “abandoned scripture as allegorical and held that human races were separate biological species, the descendants of different Adams. As another form of life, blacks need not participate in the ’equality of man.’”

Either argument could be used without a twinge of misgiving in the nineteenth century to uphold the enslavement of Africans.

Gould explains that the single-source idea of “degenerationism was probably the more popular argument, if only because scripture was not to be discarded lightly.”

But the idea that the races had originated from different Adams (many-sources) reinforced the idea of pure racial stock. Josiah Nott preached this doctrine in the ante-bellum South and was looked upon as a benefactor who defended the South’s “peculiar institutions,” and aided “most materially in giving the negro his true position as an inferior race.”

The only problem with the many-sources argument was that it cast aside the literal interpretation of the story of God’s creation of Adam. Nott attempted to solve this dilemma by setting the natural history of mankind apart from the Bible, and placing “each upon its own foundation, where it may remain without collision or molestation.”

Nott’s solution, said Gould, “forced the defenders of slavery into a quandary. Should they accept a strong argument from science at the cost of limiting religion’s sphere? Degeneration of blacks under the curse of Ham was an old and eminently functional standby.”

The book of Genesis says that Noah, Ham’s father, for some event that is open to interpretation, placed a curse on Ham’s son, Canaan: “a slave of slaves shall he be to his brothers.” Says one Biblical authority: “Some of Canaan’s descendants, the Gibeonites—in line, apparently, with Noah’s prophecy—were told by Joshua, ‘You shall always be slaves, hewers of wood and drawers of water.’” To many interpreters of the Bible this implied a sanctioned precedent for slavery, and an opinion that the descendants of Canaan were black Africans.

On the other hand the African-American church in its formative stage in the early 1800s turned to the Bible to, in the words of Dr. St. Clair Drake, “‘prove’ that Black people, Ethiopians, were powerful and respected when white men in Europe were barbarians. Ethiopia came to symbolize all of Africa . . . ‘Ethiopianism’ became an energizing myth in both the New World and in Africa itself for those pre-political movements that arose while the powerless were gathering enough strength for realistic and rewarding political activity.”

Arguments from a time before the Civil War may seem irrelevant today considering scientific findings about the origins of all humankind. But the racial bigotry they inspired on both sides still lingers as a stumbling block to a true and workable solution to “interracial” accord.

Mars in Aquarius

In the summer of 2003 the planet Mars, at one of its closes approaches to Earth,

could be seen as a small brilliant light in the constellation of Aquarius.

It may be written at some distant day, in another century, that during the first decade of the twenty-first century there appeared in the night sky a fiery light that outshone all others except the Moon and Sun. It came into the sky from the east growing brighter each night. Long ago named Ares and then Mars, this ancient God of War is known as a wanderer along the Sun’s path, often mostly obscure and hardly noticeable, except when lit by an infrequent brightly burning light. Eventually Ares falls into the blaze of sunlight and is not consumed, but is resurrected at dawn by his brother, Phoebus Apollo, and sent on his way.

An omen of ominous portent, this God of War, to those who divine the heavenly script written in starlight. The Greeks believed Ares did not come alone. Attending him in his journey were Discord and Strife, and the Goddess of War, Enyo. Terror and Trembling and Panic were at her side. “As they move,” said Edith Hamilton (Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes), “the voice of groaning arise behind them and the earth streams with blood.” And, she says: “Homer calls him, murderous, bloodstained, the incarnate curse of mortals; and, strangely, a coward, too, who bellows with pain and runs away when wounded.”

The Romans gave Ares another name, Mars, and took a more heroic view of his character. In Virgil’s poem Aeneid, he is a warrior, “magnificent in shining armor,” wrote Hamilton, “redoubtable, invincible.” On Mars’ field of battle, Roman soldiers seek a glorious death, “and find it ‘sweet to die in battle.’”

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In ancient Sumero-Babylon texts historians have found references to a deity named “Nergal,” associated with the planet Mars. In this context he has been cast out of heaven and rules the underworld as the “raging king.” Nergal’s gifts to humankind are War, Pestilence, Fever and Devastation.

So it appears that from most ancient times the planet Mars has sent us a subliminal message, subject to decoding and interpretation.

Mars and the other celestial lights challenged man’s imagination for an explanation of their origin and meaning.

To long-ago watchers of the night sky in the deserts of the Mideast, Mars would have been the most intriguing of celestial wanderers. Over a 25 to 27 month period the size and brightness of Mars varies more than any other planet. About every 2 years 2 months Mars reaches its highest point in the sky, at midnight.

At its brightest, when the Earth and Mars are closest, Mars can be brilliant. But during its journey around the Sun in an elliptical orbit Mars fades to a faint object in a field of brighter stars. And Mars has another peculiarity, at times it appears to turn back on its path. This is also true of the apparent movement of the other planets whose orbits are beyond Earth’s. This illusion is caused by a change in perspective as Earth on an inside track swings past those planets.

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It seems clear that some concept of time first grew out of the observed phases of the Moon and the summer and winter solstices and their relationship to the seasons. (The sky, it appears, was mankind’s first clock and calendar.)

The Sun might rule the day, but the realm of the planets is confined to that interval between dusk and dawn, that mysterious time of sleep and dreams. The meaning of the celestial lights in the nocturnal sky lies in the realm of occult invention.

To imagine the process that created a mythology, a religion, a calendar and an almanac from celestial evidence is pure speculation. But we could suggest that by translating what was observable into some fanciful anthropomorphic and zoomorphic iconography the hoped for occult meaning of the heavens were eventually revealed and the message defined in words.

If the Sun was pictured as a metaphorical king, seemingly the largest and most powerful object in the sky, then those traveling the king’s journey across the heavens in his absence, the Moon and seven observable planets, were lesser nobles. The development of an astral-theology might have begun with this thought: The seasons and thus planting and harvesting appeared to be a decree of the Sun as his path moved annually north to south and back again. This power is beyond human comprehension. The Sun controls all earthly vital activities including the migration of game herds, the cycle of animal reproduction, the growth and flowering of plants, etc., as they respond to this king’s yearly movement along that sky path known as the “ecliptic” to astronomers and the “Zodiac” to astrologers. It also can be seen that the sea tides rise and fall in response to the dictates of the Moon. These powers are unearthly and supernatural. Those other heavenly minions who follow the Sun’s path, are they not also of a supernatural, unearthly nature? What powers do they have over mankind’s activities?

For example, what interpretation could be made of Mars as it slowly grew in size and brightness? It had the ominous color of a distant fire. Fire when uncontrolled is deadly; when controlled it is life giving. Not surprising then is that in some cultures the deity associated with the planet Mars has a dual nature—God of War, and a God of Agriculture.

Along the king’s path there are several “houses.” These are constellations which can be resolved into 12 designs and given names. The house of each figure occupies 30 degrees of that circular path, the Zodiac. “Broadly speaking,” says an explanation of the Zodiac, “the 12 signs of the Zodiac can be divided into both masculine and feminine, positive and negative, or, active and passive. The masculine signs are Aries, Gemini, Leo, Libra, Sagittarius and Aquarius, whereas the feminine signs are Taurus, Cancer, Virgo, Scorpio, Capricorn and Pisces.” Thus by projecting opposing human attributes on the signs a resonance between heaven and Earth was established and channels of communication opened.

It was observed that Sun, Moon and planets moved through these signs of the Zodiac in orderly but different combinations. Was this the key to decoding celestial communion?

In 2003 Mars appeared and reached its brightest in the constellation Aquarius during August. Ten years before, Mars occupied the constellation Gemini and was brightest in January. To the astrologer who would compare Mars’ position to the Moon, Sun and other visible planets, each of the two appearances would deliver different messages.

Eventually, throughout centuries of observation and interpretation celestial revelations were made known, the physical is made metaphysical, mythologies written and religions founded. And astrology (knowledge and interpretation of the stars) gave birth to the empirical science of astronomy (laws and knowledge governing the stars). This is a historic process so complex as to fill volumes of explanation.

Ancient astral-cosmology underlies our Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian theological heritage; Protestantism, Catholicism, Judaism and Islam contain remnants of it. One cannot escape the idea that Mars’ companions, War, Terror, Trembling and Panic, or Nergal’s deadly plagues, War, Pestilence, Fever and Devastation, were the ancestors of the Four Horsemen (Conquest, War, Famine and Death) in the Revelation to John; or that Saint Michael the Archangel inherited Mars’ sword and became “the patron and defender of Israel against its enemies.” Is it merely coincidence the angel Lucifer, as was Nergal, was cast out of heaven and became the king of the underworld?

Horoscopes based on those 12 Zodiacal icons are still with us. Days of the week are named for Sun (Sunday) and Moon (Monday). Tuesday is taken from the Scandinavian “Tiwdag,” or “Tiw,” (Mars) God of War. Wednesday, “Onsdag,” can be traced back to a Scandinavian name for Mercury. Thursday is “Tosdag,” Jupiter; Friday, “Fredag,” Venus, and Saturday, “Lordag,” Saturn. The month of March owes its name to Mars. If your name is Martin, look up, the origin of your name shines brightly in the darkness.

For anyone looking up, do not be intimidated by the vastness of the starry heavens. Don’t say it makes you feel so small and so humble. We are all children of those celestial lights. A heavy element, for example, such as iron, which is a component of hemoglobin and allows your blood to carry oxygen from your lungs to the cells of your body, was forged in the belly of a forgotten star—a supernova that exploded long ago and fertilized space with life sustaining elements.

We in fact are made of stardust. And if it happens that we are the only sentient beings in the whole universe, then we have the great and exclusive privilege of allowing the universe to look back upon itself through our eyes!