Carter G. Woodson was born in 1875 in Virginia. The son of former slaves, he went to school at Berea College, and went on to earn graduate degrees at the University of Chicago and a PhD from Harvard. Woodson was the second African American to earn a doctorate from Harvard (the first was W.E.B. Du Bois), and the only person whose parents were enslaved to obtain a PhD!
He was was an author and a historian, and started Negro History Week in February 1926, which later became black history month. He chose February to honor the birthdays of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln. He created the Journal of Negro History.
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