[3] Woodson was an important figure to the movement of Afrocentrism,[4] due to his perspective of placing people of African descent at the center of the study of history and the human experience.

Through a mixture of self-instruction and four months of instruction from his two uncles, brothers of his mother who were also taught to read, Woodson was able to master most school subjects.

[12] Woodson worked in the coal mines near the New River in southern West Virginia,[13] which left little time for pursuing an education.

[10] At the age of twenty in 1895, Woodson was finally able to enter Douglass High School full-time and received his diploma in 1897.

Along with William D. Hartgrove, George Cleveland Hall, Alexander L. Jackson, and James E. Stamps, he founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (ASLNH) on September 9, 1915, in Chicago.

"[22] His stays at the Wabash Avenue YMCA in Chicago and in the surrounding Bronzeville neighborhood, including 1915's Lincoln Jubilee, inspired him to create the ASLNH (now the Association for the Study of African American Life and History).

[24] Woodson believed that education and increasing social and professional contacts among Black and white people could reduce racism, and he promoted the organized study of African-American history partly for that purpose.

The Association ran conferences, published The Journal of Negro History, and "particularly targeted those responsible for the education of black children.

His work The Negro in Our History has been reprinted in numerous editions and was revised by Charles H. Wesley after Woodson's death in 1950.

Woodson described the purpose of the ASNLH as the "scientific study" of the "neglected aspects of Negro life and history" by training a new generation of Black people in historical research and methodology.

[27] By 1922, Woodson's experience of academic politics and intrigue had left him so disenchanted with university life that he vowed never to work in academia again.

Woodson wrote that he would cooperate as one of the twenty-five effective canvassers, adding that he would pay the office rent for one month.

[citation needed] Responding to Grimké's comments about his proposals, on March 18, 1915, Woodson wrote: I am not afraid of being sued by white businessmen.

"[30] Race prejudice, he concluded, "is merely the logical result of tradition, the inevitable outcome of thorough instruction to the effect that the Negro has never contributed anything to the progress of mankind.

"[31] The 1920s were a time of rising Black self-consciousness expressed variously in movements such as the Harlem Renaissance and the Universal Negro Improvement Association led by an extremely charismatic Jamaican immigrant Marcus Garvey.

[31] In this atmosphere, Woodson was considered by other Black Americans to be one of their most important community leaders who discovered their "lost history.

"[31] He wrote: "[W]hile the Association welcomes the cooperation of white scholars in certain projects...it proceeds also on the basis that its important objectives can be attained through Negro investigators who are in a position to develop certain aspects of the life and history of the race which cannot otherwise be treated.

[33] Despite these claims, the need for funding ensured that Woodson had several white philanthropists such as Julius Rosenwald, George Foster Peabody, and James H. Dillard elected to the board of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History.

[33] Some of the white board members that Woodson recruited such as historian Albert Bushnell Hart and teacher Thomas Jesse Jones were not content to play the passive role that Woodson wanted, leading to clashes as both Hart and Jones wanted to write about Black history.

Woodson believed in self-reliance and racial respect, values he shared with Marcus Garvey, a Jamaican activist who worked in New York.

Du Bois, John E. Bruce, Arturo Alfonso Schomburg, Hubert H. Harrison, and T. Thomas Fortune, among others.

Woodson approved of efforts by West Indians to include materials related to Black history and culture into their school curricula.

[citation needed] Woodson was ostracized by some of his contemporaries because of his insistence on defining a category of history related to ethnic culture and race.

[citation needed] Woodson criticized Christian churches for offering limited opportunity and requiring segregation.

Such institutions are controlled by those who offer the Negroes only limited opportunity and then sometimes on the condition that they be segregated in the court of the gentiles outside of the temple of Jehovah.

"[39] Woodson died suddenly from a heart attack in the office within his home in the Shaw, Washington, D.C., neighborhood on April 3, 1950, at the age of 74.

He created the Negro History Bulletin, developed for teachers in elementary and high school grades, and published continuously since 1937.

Dorothy Porter Wesley recalled: "Woodson would wrap up his publications, take them to the post office and have dinner at the YMCA.