100 Years of Opening Doors, The Legacy of Heritage Months
Illustration: Humanizing History Visuals.
Welcome to Humanizing History™! Every month, we feature a central theme. Each week, we dive into different areas of focus.
This month’s theme: Heritage, Memory, and the Stories We Tell
This week’s focus: Historical Literacy, or helpful frameworks to expand how we approach history and identity
Today’s edition of Humanizing History™ is about 1100 words, an estimated 3½-minute read.
The Why for This Week’s Topic
This February marks 100 years since Carter G. Woodson launched Negro History Week, a visionary idea that would grow into Black History Month.
This was no small milestone. A century later, its impact is still felt. It opened doors — in our schools, curricula, public consciousness — that may have otherwise remained closed.
It extended lenses, challenged assumptions, and encouraged many of us to remember, teach, and celebrate stories that had long been marginalized — pushed to footnotes or left out of textbooks entirely.
Over time, its legacy opened a pathway — a model of remembrance and recognition — that influenced the emergence of additional commemorative and heritage months, including but not limited to Hispanic Heritage Month, Native American Heritage Month, Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, Irish American Heritage Month, Women’s History Month, Pride Month, and others — each shaped by its own history, advocacy, and cultural context.
When seen as doorways rather than destinations, as lenses rather than containers, Heritage Months invite us to pause, explore, and expand what — and who — comes to mind when we think of the people, collectives, and movements that shaped our world.
This month, to honor the 100-year legacy of Heritage Months, we’ll explore:
Woodson’s Vision: the spark that opened doors to overlooked stories
Heritage Unpacked: understanding history as living, layered, and complex
Hidden Threads: the people and influences that shape culture beyond the spotlight
Pathways Forward: keeping heritage alive, expansive, and humanizing
Today, we begin with the spark: Dr. Carter G. Woodson
Origins and Purpose, Carter G. Woodson’s Vision
Born in 1875, just ten years after the end of the Civil War, Dr. Carter G. Woodson faced enormous obstacles, yet carved opportunity at nearly every turn.
One of nine children, born to formerly enslaved parents, Woodson and his family had been legally denied access to education for generations. And yet, Woodson devoted his life to expanding education for others.
As a young man, he worked in the coal mines to support his family before saving enough to pursue schooling at Frederick Douglass High School. Woodson went on to earn a PhD in History from Harvard — the second Black American to do so — and dedicated his career to ensuring that the contributions of Black Americans were recognized and remembered.
He founded The Journal of Negro History, and in 1937, with the strong urging of Mary McLeod Bethune, launched The Negro History Bulletin, a resource for teachers and students that remained in print until 2001.
In 1926, Woodson launched Negro History Week, selecting the second week of February to honor the birthdays of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln.
Reflecting on this work, Woodson states: “It is not so much a Negro History Week as it is a History Week. We should emphasize not Negro History, but the Negro in History. What we need is not a history of selected races or nations, but the history of the world void of national bias, race hatred, and religious prejudice.”
Over the decades, the week grew into a national observance, eventually becoming the full month of February in 1976, when it was formally recognized by President Gerald Ford during the nation’s bicentennial year.
Today, 100 years later, with intention, Black History and other Heritage Months may stand as lenses or moving pathways, not static containers — as ways to honor heritage without flattening it, to open doors to understanding, rather than close them.
Why Heritage Months Still Have Impact
When seen as doorways, rather than destinations, Heritage Months may invite exploration instead of confinement. They can:
Highlight the contributions of communities historically ignored or underrepresented
Encourage reflection on power, memory, and storytelling
Offer opportunities to connect across communities, tracing shared obstacles and achievements
Across the country, however, diverse perspectives are still not the norm. This gap in representation is precisely the absence Woodson was responding to a century ago — and in many ways, one that still persists, echoing the ongoing need for Heritage Months.
In many states, K-12 curricula and state standards underrepresent Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian, and other communities’ histories.
While some states, such as California and Illinois, have begun incorporating Ethnic Studies into their standards, a robust and representative curriculum is far from universal.
For example, an education report found that “87% of state history standards do not mention Native American history after 1900.”
Another report found that “87% of key topics in Latino history were either not covered in the evaluated books or mentioned in five or fewer sentences. Together the books included just one Hispanic breakthrough moment from the last 200 years: Sonia Sotomayor’s appointment to the Supreme Court.”
Representation is also uneven. For example, in regard to Asian American history, while New York state had “14 content strands related to Asian American history that were highly detailed and content-specific,” there were 18 states that had zero standards for teaching Asian American history.
This lack of representation — compounded by harmful stereotypes — can dehumanize the very students our curricula are meant to serve.
Research shows that when racial and ethnic representation is absent or very limited in curricula, students from marginalized communities often feel like they “do not fit in,” which can negatively impact identity development, self-esteem, and even academic outcomes like grades and retention rates.
By contrast, the inclusion of diverse perspectives may help foster more equitable and empowering learning environments.
Heritage Months provide a structured space to correct omissions, reveal interconnections, and challenge simplified narratives.
While the long-term goal may be full integration of diverse histories into everyday curricula — making designated months perhaps less necessary someday — for now, these observances still matter deeply.
Looking Ahead
This month, we’ll continue exploring the 100-year legacy of Heritage Months by unpacking what it means to honor heritage as living and complex, and highlighting the hidden threads of influence that shape our culture.
We’ll also consider how to keep heritage alive, expansive, and humanizing, seeing these observances as pathways, rather than boxes — doorways to deeper stories, richer context, and enduring connection.
Let’s Pause and Reflect
Which stories from your own community, family, or studies have been overlooked or forgotten?
How does seeing Heritage Months as lenses, not containers, change the way we engage with history?
If a Heritage Month were a doorway, what would you want to step through and explore?
If this piece stirred a memory, a question, or a name you think deserves more attention, feel free to reach out and share.
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