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“Carter G. Woodson and the Origins of Multiculturalism”
From its inception, America has been a landscape peopled by diverse ethnic and racial
groups, and today virtually all peoples are represented. If America has always been
racially and ethnically diverse, the nation's self-image has not always recognized
its multicultural history. Until the last decades of the twentieth century, America
has seen itself largely as the flowering of Anglo-Saxon culture and prided itself
on allowing immigrants to adopt the American way.
During the early years of the twentieth century, a small number of intellectuals
began to question whether America was simply a transplant of English civilization.
W. E. B. DuBois, Theodore Herzel, and Randolph Bourne believed that modern America
should embrace the cultural differences that newcomers brought with them to America.
Democracy, they believed, required tolerance of difference and could sustain those
differences in harmony.
Among those intellectuals of the Progressive era, Carter G. Woodson did most to
forge an intellectual movement to educate Americans about cultural diversity and
democracy. For the sake of African Americans and all Americans, Woodson heralded
the contributions of African Americans and the black tradition. In 1915, he established
the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History and by the time of his death
in 1950, he had laid the foundation for a rethinking of American identity. The multiculturalism
of our times is built on the intellectual and institutional labors of Woodson and
the association he established. He should be known not simply as the Father of Black
History, but as a pioneer of multiculturalism as well.
In honor of its founder, the Association for the Study of African American Life and History devotes the 2008
Annual Black History Theme to both the labors of Woodson and the origins of multiculturalism.
Source:
http://www.asalh.org/2008NationalBlackHistoryTheme.html, August 7, 2007
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