02/02/2021
This time last year, I attended a weeklong professional development with for their Winter Standards Institute. During one of the sessions, they asked the audience to stand if they knew or were familiar with various change makers in our history. When they displayed this photo, not as many people were able to stand acknowledging this gentleman as some of the other well known people we always see shared. Once his identity was revealed, you could hear the audience’s reaction that they were aware of his name, just not as familiar with this picture. It was a reminder to a room of more than 1K educators that we ALL must do a better job of presenting history and images.
Carter G. Woodson has been called the "father of black history". In February 1926 he launched the celebration of "Negro History Week", the precursor of Black History Month.
Did you immediately recognize this gentleman before reading the caption? If you didn’t, do you at least remember hearing his name growing up? Perhaps you have an older image of him in your mind.
To be honest, I wasn’t able to stand and it embarrassed me so bad. I wasn’t familiar with this image of Carter G. Woodson. I was familiar with his history, though!
