Seeking to magnify his message to a broader audience, he started motivating his fraternity Omega Psi Phi to promote his work. And in 1924, they reacted by producing the “Negro Achievement Week.” While that assisted advance the cause, Woodson still wasn’t pleased and looked for even higher effect. He chose it would be the ASALH’s duty to shoulder and, in 1926, he sent a news release stating the 2nd week in February “Negro History Week.” Woodson picked that specific week, in part, due to the fact that it includes the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln, who contributed in eliminating slavery, and Frederick Douglass, the popular Black abolitionist and orator.Â
But, as Scott composed, the concept was to move attention from the achievements of simply 2 males and towards that of the whole race. “Woodson believed that history was made by the people, not simply or primarily by great men,” the teacher stated. “He envisioned the study and celebration of the Negro as a race, not simply as the producers of a great man. And Lincoln, however great, had not freed the slaves—the Union Army, including hundreds of thousands of black soldiers and sailors, had done that. Rather than focusing on two men, the black community, he believed, should focus on the countless black men and women who had contributed to the advance of human civilization.”
