In 1915, Carter G. Woodson, a historian interested in
education, founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and
History. It was through this organization that he began pressing for
a "Negro History Week" as a mechanism for exploring the contributions
of Black Americans. This became reality in 1926. Woodson chose
the second week of February because two persons he felt had
dramatically affected the lives of Black Americans were born during
that month: Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. It would be much
later, in 1976, when the now-renamed Association for the Study of
Afro-American Life and History would succeed in promoting this week
into Black History Month.