PINELLAS COUNTY, Fla. — Since 1976, the contributions of Black pioneers have been remembered during Black History Month, celebrated every February. But its origins stretch farther back with one man that wanted the education system to explore the neglected past of African Americans.    

Dr. Carter G. Woodson was born the son of former slaves on December 19th, 1875. As a teenager working in the coal mines at Virginia, he started his education late, but quickly caught up by earning degrees at Berea College, the University of Chicago and becoming only the second Black person at that time to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard University. 

“He went on to do extraordinary things as notably a professor, but a journalist and a historian," said Dr. Carter G. Woodson African American Museum executive director Terri Lipsey Scott. But she said Dr. Woodson realized something in history was missing.

”Carter G. Woodson, as a historian himself, recognized the absence of African American history in America’s culture," she said. “And with that, he created what began as ‘Negro History Week’ in 1926.”

Scheduled in the second week of February between Abraham Lincoln's and Frederick Douglass' birthdays, Negro History Week was celebrated by many across the country, but not by everyone.

“That was not a part of the curriculum for Pinellas County," said former Pinellas County school teacher Delceda Harris-Thompson. “Black history just was not.”

It was in 1957 when Harris-Thompson started teaching 2nd grade in St. Petersburg. Because of segregation, she only taught Black children then, but she said teaching them about Black history was still difficult.

“I only told my children about what I had learned in high school: George Washington Carver, Marian Anderson, Booker T. Washington and Mary McLeod Bethune. I was an adult, a young adult before I heard about Carter G. Woodson," Harris-Thompson said.

It wasn't until the 1970s when Black college students and professors at Kent State University in Ohio pushed to expand Negro History Week to a month. In 1976, Jimmy Carter became the first president to recognize Black History Month. It changed so much for so many.

“It made me aware that I had missed out, even in high school and even in my early teaching career, that I had missed out on Negro History Week," said Harris-Thompson.

Dr. Woodson died in 1950. Some believe he remains a hidden figure in the very history he spent his life cultivating, which is why the Dr. Carter G. Woodson African American Museum bears his name and follows his singular belief. 

”Our stories are Black History,” Scott said. “But more importantly, our stories are American history.”