The Asian Origins of Black History Month: Carter G. Woodson in the Philippines

• In Event: Racial Ideologies and Struggles for Social Justice

Abstract

In an often overlooked passage from The Miseducation of the Negro, Carter G. Woodson states in no uncertain terms that his intellectual mission to write black history for black people was directly inspired by his earlier efforts to teach Philippine history to Filipino students in the Philippines. While contemporary scholars rarely treat Woodson as a transnational intellectual, these critical years between 1903 and 1907 reveal a worldly, wide-minded thinker who saw black nationalism as something that was less geographically fixed and more Pan-Third World and global in scope. In many ways, the modern academic field of African American history itself owes its founding to Woodson’s experiences in the rural agricultural community of San Isidro in the Nueva Ecija province of northern Luzon. Had it not been for a failed medical exam in 1909, Woodson may very well have foregone his PhD at Harvard and instead remain permanently in the Philippines. As late as 1911 he was in fact still inquiring with the Bureau of Insular Affairs about a return to the islands after his receiving his doctorate—and this time with several members of his family.

Far from an idiosyncratic academic, however, Woodson worked alongside several dozen other black teachers in the Philippines as part of the American colonial government’s Department of Education. By examining records from the Bureau of Insular Affairs, the federal Civil Service personnel files, rare books written by black teachers in Tagalog, as well as Filipino student essays this paper will attempt to paint a more complete picture of black teachers in the Philippines as well as the local Filipino peoples that they interacted with. How were attempts to build both a Filipino nation and a black nation linked across the Pacific? What space did black intellectuals like Woodson actually occupy within the American colonial regime? These questions will all be explored through Woodson’s personal biography in the Philippines as well as the many other black teachers that he met there. In conclusion, this paper will re-imagine black intellectual history through America’s colonial project in the Philippines through the lives of black teachers and the political thought of Filipino children.

Author

• Guy Emerson Mount, University of Chicago