Carter godwin woodson biography

Early Years

Carter Godwin Woodson was born in New Canton in Buckingham County on December 19, 1875. His parents, James Henry Woodson of Fluvanna County and Anne Eliza Riddle Woodson of Buckingham County, had been enslaved.

Woodson grew up in Virginia, working as a farm laborer and attending school in a one-room schoolhouse, where he was taught by his uncles. In 1892 he moved to West Virginia, and, following his older brothers, worked as a coal miner in Fayette County for better wages than he had received for agricultural work.

In 1895, Woodson enrolled in segregated Douglass High School in Huntington, West Virginia, and earned his high school diploma in 1897 after completing four years of course work in two years.

Black history quotes

In 1903 he received a bachelor’s degree from Berea College, an integrated school in Kentucky founded by abolitionists. For the next four years he taught in the Philippines. He then earned a master’s degree in European history from the University of Chicago (1