CHARLOTTE, N.C. — In the beginning what we know as Black History Month was only a week.
Let's connect the dots.
It was 1926, and Harvard-trained historian Carter G. Woodson got a group together, looking for ways to celebrate the accomplishments and the history of Black Americans in public schools.
They focused their efforts on the second week of February. Why? It coordinated with the birthdays of two important Americans, President Abraham Lincoln and activist Frederick Douglass.
At first, they got a lukewarm response across the country. In fact, North Carolina was one of only three states that participated that first year.
It was decades later during the civil rights movement in the 1960s that the week turned into a month. And in 1976, President Gerald Ford officially designated February as Black History Month.
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