Carter Godwin Woodson was the historian who founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (1915) and Negro History Week (1926), which became Black History Month. In AP African American Studies, he represents the institution-building side of the Black intellectual tradition (Topic 3.15).
Carter Godwin Woodson, often called the "Father of Black History," was a historian and educator who built the institutions that made Black history a formal field of study. In 1915 he founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (now ASALH), and in 1926 he launched Negro History Week, the February observance that later grew into Black History Month. He also published scholarship and educational resources designed to put Black history directly into the hands of Black students and teachers.
The CED frames Woodson through the New Negro movement's mission. Writers, artists, and educators of that era believed U.S. schools taught Black students that their people had made no meaningful cultural contributions, which reinforced ideas of inferiority (EK 3.15.A.1). Woodson's answer was for African Americans to become agents of their own education. He created the journals, organizations, and curricula to make that possible, producing exactly the kind of "body of literature and educational resources" the CED says refuted the myth that African Americans were a people without history (EK 3.15.A.2).
Woodson lives in Topic 3.15 (Black History Education and African American Studies) in Unit 3, The Practice of Freedom. He's your go-to evidence for two learning objectives. For 3.15.A, he shows why New Negro movement educators worked to research and spread Black history to Black students. For 3.15.B, he's a major figure in the Black intellectual tradition that existed long before African American Studies entered colleges in the late 1960s (EK 3.15.B.1). Here's the big-picture move the exam rewards: the AP course you're taking right now descends from the institutions Woodson built. He's not just a name to memorize. He's the answer to "where did this discipline come from?"
Keep studying AP® African American Studies Unit 3
Arturo Schomburg (Unit 3)
Schomburg and Woodson attacked the same problem from two directions. Schomburg collected the sources, building the archive that became the Schomburg Center, while Woodson built the organizations and publications that taught from those sources. Together they prove EK 3.15.A.2's point that New Negro intellectuals created real resources, not just arguments.
Black intellectual tradition (Unit 3)
Woodson is a key link in a chain that started two centuries before African American Studies reached universities in the late 1960s. He shows how activists, educators, and archivists documented Black experiences generation after generation, which is exactly what EK 3.15.B.1 asks you to describe.
W.E.B. Du Bois (Units 2-3)
Du Bois and Woodson were both Harvard-trained historians who used scholarship to dismantle racist myths. Du Bois leaned toward theory and political argument while Woodson focused on getting Black history into schools and communities. Pairing them gives you a stronger answer about how Black intellectuals fought educational racism.
African Free School (Unit 3)
The African Free School educated Black children in New York starting in the late eighteenth century, training future abolitionist leaders (EK 3.15.B.2). It's the early end of the same tradition Woodson institutionalized over a century later, perfect for a continuity argument about Black-led education.
Multiple-choice questions on Woodson tend to test concrete facts. Know that he founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, that he established Negro History Week in 1926, and that Negro History Week was the original name of what became Black History Month. Beyond recall, expect questions that ask WHY New Negro educators like Woodson spread Black history, and the answer is always grounded in EK 3.15.A.1: schools taught Black inferiority, so Black communities had to become agents of their own education. No released FRQ has used Woodson's name verbatim, but he's strong evidence for short-answer or project responses about the origins of African American Studies and the Black intellectual tradition.
Both appear in Topic 3.15 as New Negro-era builders of Black historical study, so they're easy to swap. Keep them straight by their products. Schomburg was the bibliophile and collector whose personal archive became the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Woodson was the organizer and educator who founded the ASNLH and Negro History Week. Schomburg preserved the evidence; Woodson built the institutions that taught it.
Carter G. Woodson founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History in 1915 to support the formal study of Black history.
In 1926 Woodson established Negro History Week, which later expanded into Black History Month.
Woodson's work answers LO 3.15.A: New Negro educators spread Black history because U.S. schools taught that Black people had no meaningful cultural contributions.
He is a central figure in the Black intellectual tradition that documented Black experiences long before African American Studies entered universities in the late 1960s.
Woodson built institutions and publications, while his contemporary Arturo Schomburg built the archive, and the two efforts reinforced each other.
He founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History in 1915, launched Negro History Week in 1926, and published scholarship and educational resources so Black students could learn their own history. For AP purposes, he's the institution-builder of the Black intellectual tradition in Topic 3.15.
Yes, indirectly. He established Negro History Week in February 1926, and that observance later expanded into the full Black History Month celebrated today. The original name, Negro History Week, is a common multiple-choice answer.
Woodson built organizations and publications (the ASNLH, Negro History Week), while Schomburg was a bibliophile whose collection of Black historical sources became the Schomburg Center in Harlem. Think organizer versus archivist, both working in the New Negro era.
He and other New Negro movement educators argued that U.S. schools reinforced the idea that Black people had made no meaningful contributions and were therefore inferior (EK 3.15.A.1). Teaching Black history was a way for African Americans to become agents of their own education and advancement.
The Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, founded in 1915 and known today as ASALH. It supported research, publishing, and teaching of Black history decades before African American Studies became a university field in the late 1960s.
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