By Risen Pharaoh
At an epoch when our people were inundated with Eurocentricity, one man resurrected our history. Though many scholars emerged after him, all owe their ability to present research to the tireless devotion of Dr. Carter G. Woodson.
Woodson’s gift was he taught us that insurrection against a system wasn’t about guns, knives nor tanks but remained contingent on the liberation of one’s mind. He taught us pride. Each Pharaoh ascended to rule Kemet with the expectation that his rule would exceed the kingdom his predecessor had built, so must we commit to building a better future. Dr. Woodson’s words are a fine place to start.
The Miseducation of the Negro still provides an artillery of insight into identifying the societal assault on the black mind. How relevant are the words he printed in the 1933 manuscript to states where our children are miseducated in schools only to be murdered in their own communities?If they survive their communities, they are beset by European economic practices that promote colonization.
Woodson said it best with, “when you control a man’s thinking, you don’t have to worry about his actions.” The Negro folk have unfortunately chosen the colonizer’s capitalism over their color.
Now, the new colonization is voluntary.
Woodson was the second black man, behind W.E.B. Dubois, to receive a Doctorate from Harvard and remarked sometime later that it taught him twenty years to remove the Eurocentric thought patterns from his psyche.
After teaching in the Phillippines, Woodson also worked as dean on the liberal arts at Howard University, publishing the Journal of Negro History and started Negro History week, which later became Black History Month( though it was co-opted into a multicultural manipulation by the powers that be).
Woodson was an author, historian, publisher, professor and a man with a passion to serve. He cared not for titles, but cared for the enlightenment of his people. He honored his ancestors and now we as his successors must honor him.
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