Today, Burnis Morris, the Carter G. Woodson Professor of Journalism and Mass Communications at Marshall, on behalf of Marshall President Dr. Jerome Gilbert and Dr. Alan B. Gould, executive director of the John Deaver Drinko Academy, announced the Dr. Carter G. Woodson Lyceum. The lyceum will address disparities and other challenges in education, provide a dialogue for solving social problems and support free speech – while reuniting Huntington and West Virginia to the teachings of the “Father of Black History.”
The lyceum is named in honor of Woodson, one of the leading educators of the 20th century, a former West Virginia coal miner and a former resident of Huntington, where he graduated from high school in 1896 and served as a school principal from 1900 to 1903. Woodson (Dec. 19, 1875-April 3, 1950) was the second African American student to receive a Ph.D. in history at Harvard and the first person whose parents were former slaves to earn a doctorate in history from any institution. The lyceum’s name also is inspired by Aristotle’s Lyceum, a school founded in 335 B.C. as a place for thinking and learning.
At Marshall, the lyceum will reflect influences of Woodson and Aristotle – while addressing critical issues involving education, freedom of expression and race/ethnicity. The lyceum will support scholarships for minorities and disadvantaged students and encourage full participation of all groups and individuals seeking the American dream.
“When Dr. Woodson said, ‘The mere imparting of information is not education,’ he was encouraging us to translate our teaching into doing,” said Gilbert. “It is not enough for us to be complacent where we are with race relations or equality in general. It is our duty to further Dr. Woodson’s mission for making educational institutions breeding grounds for understanding and acceptance, and today’s announcement moves Marshall another step closer to that goal.”
Gould, a former interim president, provost, dean and history professor during a long career at Marshall, has championed the Woodson cause to make the study of history more inclusive and improve race relations since the mid-1980s, when he began programs to honor Woodson’s work and his ties to Huntington and West Virginia. The lyceum is a natural outgrowth of those early efforts.
Gould said, “I am pleased the Drinko Academy and Marshall University could make this commitment to uniting the many voices among us as one community in addressing the problems of education and other issues and recognizing we all have one history. It is what Dr. Woodson’s scholarship taught us about resolving problems through better education.”
Woodson created the first Negro History Week observance in February 1926. Black history was not widely appreciated before his research and public-education program. He settled for a week, and his followers expanded it to a month in the 1970s. He advocated yearlong study of black history, believing it should be integrated among all history. He felt recognition and appreciation of black achievements would reduce racial discrimination.
Woodson founded two publications: The Journal of Negro History (now operating as The Journal of African American History) and The Negro History Bulletin (now The Black History Bulletin). Journalism also was influenced by Woodson, who wrote hundreds of newspaper columns promoting and popularizing black history, mostly in the 1930s.
The lyceum will be operated as a collaboration between the Drinko Academy and the W. Page Pitt School of Journalism and Mass Communications, which is an academic unit in the College of Arts and Media. The lyceum’s programs will be directed by Morris.
Dean Don Van Horn said, “The College of Arts and Media is honored to be a part of the work that will come from the Carter G. Woodson Lyceum. There is much yet to be done in our country to develop awareness of and appreciation for black history. The lyceum’s mission to prepare schoolteachers to include black history in curriculums is essential to increasing that awareness and appreciation. I applaud Professor Morris’s leadership in developing the lyceum with Dr. Gould and I am also grateful to Dr. Gould and the Drinko Academy for championing this cause.”
Janet Dooley, director of the School of Journalism and Mass Communications and associate dean of the College of Arts and Media, said: “The lyceum is a natural and welcome extension of the Carter G. Woodson Professorship. Professor Morris has been instrumental in calling attention to Woodson’s time in Huntington and to his endeavors as a journalist. We are eager to help bring Woodson to the forefront in the community and in the region.”
Woodson’s father was a former slave who arrived in 1870 and helped Collis P. Huntington complete the C & O Railroad in the area that became Huntington. His family returned to Virginia, and Carter Godwin Woodson was born in New Canton in 1875. His family returned to Huntington in the 1890s, but Woodson began working in the West Virginia coal mines before he joined his family in Huntington and graduated from the Douglass School. He was fond of telling associates that West Virginia was a turning point in his life.
While efforts to remember Woodson in Huntington go back four decades, the idea for the lyceum itself grew out of the Drinko Academy’s recognition of Dr. Woodson’s work during Black History Month in 2015 by about 30 members of the Marshall-Huntington community who compiled a long list of ways to remember and reconnect him to their community.
The following year, on Feb. 5, 2016, Huntington Mayor Steve Williams proclaimed Dr. Carter G. Woodson Day, and the West Virginia Senate, House of Delegates and Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin issued state proclamations in Woodson’s honor. Sens. Joe Manchin and Shelley Moore Capito and Rep. Evan Jenkins had statements honoring Woodson entered in the Congressional Record.
The lyceum now will continue what is becoming a tradition – using February to honor the Father of Black History. Williams will proclaim Feb. 1 “Dr. Carter G. Woodson Day” and other state and community leaders will join the mayor with statements honoring Woodson. Please see the separate release of Black History Month events and activities, all of which are inspired by Woodson’s legacy.
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Photos: Speakers at the announcement of the Dr. Carter G. Woodson Lyceum included Burnis Morris, the Carter G. Woodson professor of journalism and mass communications at Marshall University; William Smith, superintendent of the Cabell County Schools; and Dr. Gayle L. Ormiston, Marshall’s provost and senior vice president of academic affairs.