Carter G. Woodson (1875-1950) was the child and student of formerly enslaved people and the second African American to receive a PhD from Harvard, in 1912. He worked in public schools in West Virginia, the Philippines, and Washington, D.C., where he taught at the Paul Laurence Dunbar High School. Woodson founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History in 1915, the Journal of Negro History in 1916, and Negro History Week (now celebrated as Black History Month) in 1926.

Jarvis R. Givens (introduction) is an assistant professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Givens earned his PhD in African American Studies from UC Berkeley and is the author of Fugitive Pedagogy: Carter G. Woodson and the Art of Black Teaching (2021), winner of the 2022 ASALH Book Prize.