The idea to honor black history was proposed Feb. 12, 1926, by 
educator Carter G. Woodson. The idea was introduced as Negro History 
Week, but it was expanded to the month of February in 1976 to 
coincide with the birthdays of Frederick Douglass and Abraham 
Lincoln.

Woodson graduated from Harvard in 1912 and was only the second black 
man in the United States to earn a PhD in history. In 1915, he 
became a founder of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and 
History (now known as the Association for the Study of Afro-American 
Life and History). In 1916, the group began publishing the quarterly 
Journal of Negro History.