02/23/2026
Happy 100th Birthday!
2026 marks a milestone of both progress and persistence in the United States, the 100th anniversary of federal recognition for Black Americans. What began as a singular week of learning and recognition called Negro History Week in 1926 has grown into an overall cultural observance of Black History throughout the month of February.
The architect of this movement was Dr. Carter G. Woodson. A historian and educator and the son of formerly enslaved parents, Dr. Woodson understood that denying people of their history denies them of their humanity. “Those who have no record of what their forebears have accomplished lose the inspiration which comes from the teaching of biography and history,” he wrote. To combat that, he launched Negro History Week (NHW) to coincide with the February birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, the two figures whom he felt were symbolically tied to African American freedom.
For 40 years, educators embraced it, churches amplified it, and civic groups built programming around it. In the 1960’s, as the Civil Rights Movement emerged, NHW became more reflective of the urgency of a nation grappling with its conscience. By 1976, the United States formally expanded the week-long recognition into Black History Month with the essence of Woodson’s vision remaining unchanged: Black history is not a sidebar to American history - it is part of it.
