[3] Beyond his role with Baltimore schools, Wood was an active leader in several state and nationwide educational and civil rights organizations.
[1][8][9] He received his Master of Arts degree at Eckstein Norton University in Cane Spring, Kentucky in 1906.
Wood first worked as a teacher in a one-room log schoolhouse,[7] and continued teaching in rural Kentucky schools from 1896 to 1899.
[13] In 1928, Wood was briefly investigated by the School Board due to allegations he was being financially influenced by a local black leader, Tom Smith, but the two men were exonerated.
[21] The next year, citing both "the justice of the request" and Wood's "excellent service" to the city's schools, the executive secretary of the city's Public School Association, Marie Bauernschmidt put forward the proposal that Wood be promoted to the equal status of assistant superintendent.
[3] In 1929, Wood assisted in the organization of the "first Negro symphony in the United States," which was formed and put on its first concert in Baltimore.
[2][25] In response to a 1934 lynching in Somerset County, Maryland, Wood worked with the Urban League and other black leaders in Baltimore to draft a resolution calling on Governor Albert Ritchie to pass an anti-lynching statute.
[34] The funeral service was attended by about 650 people, and was accompanied by a five-minute period of silence at all city schools, with flags flown at half-mast.
[35] While Wood had been unable to achieve an equal title of assistant superintendent during his life, his successor Henderson finally was granted that position in 1945.
Initially, the site was a camp operated by a private group headed by Wood himself, but it was purchased by Baltimore City Department of Public Welfare after his death and reopened in his honor.