The Early Black History Movement, Carter G. Woodson, and Lorenzo Johnston Greene (review)

Pero Dagbovie has made a vital study of black American intellectual life and black professional historians. We owe him a debt of gratitude for this monograph, which sheds light on two of the most influential black historians prior to 1950—Carter G. Woodson and Lorenzo J. Greene. Thematically there are several strands running through Dagbovie's narrative—mentor and student, movement leader and disciple, political polemicist and historical propagandist, and tireless commitment to scholarship. Also central to this book is how difficult it was for black scholars to break the phalanx of the all-white historical profession and academic establishment before the civil rights era. Dagbovie increases our knowledge by telling the remarkable story of how a small group of black academically trained historians along with black school teachers, especially black women teachers, supported the democratic social insurgency of black Americans by teaching and uncovering the history of black Americans as a force for self-empowerment, social change and academic understanding. The early history of the black history movement in which Woodson and Greene were key actors surely would have brought approving nods from the Italian Marxist theorist, Antonio Gramsci, as models of organic intellectuals in breaking down the intellectual and cultural hegemony of whiteness in American history.

This story is intriguing because the relationship between the senior Woodson and the junior Greene was fraught with financial pressures, at times personal animosities, Woodson's insufferable idiosyncrasies, institutional limitations, and individual frustrations. Remarkably, the taut relationship between these two scholars never got in the way of each of their unwavering commitment to research, writing, and spreading black history. And this is the side of the story of the black history movement where Dagbovie's book shines.

While Dagbovie's book adds to our knowledge there is one large hole that one wishes the author might have taken more time to fill. My chief criticism of Dagbovie's book is the lack of philosophical exploration of both Woodson and Greene's views on history. Both of these men were in the contributionist era of writing black history, however, the author never quite explains fully enough how these respective scholars thought about the meaning of their prodigious scholarship. This is especially true in chapter 3 where the author thinly analyzes one of Woodson's most important and popular books The Mis-Education of the Negro. It would have been more rewarding if Dagbovie had put more time into elaborating on their respective context in light of their PhD mentors and how they fit into the American historical professional as each man entered the discipline and matured as scholars. The varying schools of thought and influence about studying and writing history from the early to mid 20th century—empirical, Marxists, and consensus schools—would have illumined readers further and brought to light why the insurgency of the black history movement was so crucial in forcing the American historical professional to be more fully inclusive of all American people. While this aspect of the book is disappointing, credit is due Dagbovie for helping us understand the significance of these two luminary historians in relationship to one another.