Black Scholars Document African American Culture and History Against Erasure

A generation of Black scholars worked in the early twentieth century to document African American culture, history, and intellectual achievement against the deliberate erasure of white supremacist historiography. Carter G. Woodson, who founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History in 1915 and established what became Black History Month, argued that Black history had been deliberately suppressed in American education. His Journal of Negro History (1916) published scholarly research on African American history. W.E.B. Du Bois's historical studies challenged Dunning School historiography that depicted Reconstruction as Black incompetence.