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IDKMYDE: The 100-Year Blueprint- Carter G. Woodson Was Playing Chess · The Breakfast Club

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: The original one hundred, Carter G. Woodson was playing chess.
• 0:05
  Speaker 2: I didn't know.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Welcome Back, Know it All to season five, one, two, three,
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: four five of the most anticipated podcast on the Black
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: Effect podcast Network, especially in February.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: In title t I didn't.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: I didn't know. I am your host, be dots and
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: boy oh boy, A lot has changed since last February.
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: Where to start? First order of business?
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: I won mister Alumni Winston Salem State University twenty twenty five.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: It was a fundraiser for scholarships and I raised over
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: sixteen thousand dollars. My platform was a dollar in a dream.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: I just asked everybody I came across to give one
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: dollar four quarters twenty niffolks. I was trying to show
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: the power of group economics and collaborative efforts, and it worked.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: I wear my crown everywhere gas station basketball game, just
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: aimlessly walking around the house with a WSSU row bone
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: and my crown. But whens in Satom State University got
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: thirty three thousand alumni, but there's only one mister alumni,
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: and I am he.
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: As for the podcast, Man, we have grown.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: Starting last March, we started dropping weekly episodes that's right,
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: and it's not just about Black history.
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: It's anything that I didn't know. Maybe you didn't either.
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: I threw myself twenty yards off of scooter in the
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: Dominican Republic. The locals came out and poured gasoline on
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: my open wounds.
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: I did an episode about it.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: Held a Dominican Republic and Haiti were once one big
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: island called Hispaniola.
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: I did an episode about it.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, there's a phenomenon that says
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: about three hundred to two hundred million years ago, all
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: of the continents North America, South America, Africa, Europe, Asia,
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: they all existed as one single continent, Pangaea.
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: I did an episode about it.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: Look since last February, we dropped like forty new episodes.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: Catch up on them for listeners of the podcast I
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: Didn't Know.
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: Maybe you didn't either.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: We'd call you a know it all, not because you
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: know it all, but because you'll want to know it all.
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: So welcome know it All. Back to season.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: Five of I Didn't Know, Maybe you didn't either, And
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  Speaker 1: this season is special because it's the one hundred year
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: celebration of recognizing Black History Month.
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: In February they're right.
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  Speaker 1: One hundred years ago, in nineteen hundred and twenty six,
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  Speaker 1: Carter G. Woodson founded Black History Week, And to kick
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: off the very first episode of season five, I've got
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: three of the most useless facts you'll never need, never
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  Speaker 1: not a day in life about Carter G.
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  Speaker 2: Woodson.
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  Speaker 1: Disclaimer this segment is titled three Useless Facts, but trust
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  Speaker 1: and believe these three facts are very important and will
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  Speaker 1: be very useful throughout the episode.
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: Carry on.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: First, did you know that the man responsible for Black
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: History Month, which started his Black History Week, didn't even
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  Speaker 1: start high school until he was twenty years old. Your
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  Speaker 1: second useless fact, that same gentleman, before he was a
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  Speaker 1: scholar at Harvard, he was a coal miner. He would
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: be reading of the other coal miners in West Virginia
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  Speaker 1: about politics. And your third useless fact. When W. E. B.
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: Du Bois had saw what that gentleman had built, he
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  Speaker 1: called it the single greatest achievement of the Harlem Renaissance.
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  Speaker 2: Did you know all of that about Carter G. Woodson?
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: Because I didn't.
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: I didn't know.
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: Maybe you didn't know.
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: I didn't know.
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: Maybe I didn't know.
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: I didn't know. I didn't know. I didn't know.
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: I didn't know. I didn't know.
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  Speaker 1: First of all, Black History Month wasn't a gift. It
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: wasn't a favor. It wasn't America saying, you know what,
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: let's include you all. Nah. Black History Month was a counterattack.
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  Speaker 1: See in nineteen twenty six, a historian named Carter G.
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: Woodson launched something called Negro History Week. I'm sure you're
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: familiar with that, but even that name tells you what
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  Speaker 1: time it was. At that time, American history books either
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  Speaker 1: ignored Black people completely or mentioned us once briefly as
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  Speaker 1: a problem.
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  Speaker 2: Carter G.
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  Speaker 1: Wasn't confused. He was strategic. He understood something very dangerous.
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  Speaker 1: If you control the story, you control the future. So
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: instead of begging universities to teach Black history, instead of
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  Speaker 1: waiting on approval, instead of arguing with folks committed to
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  Speaker 1: misunderstanding who we were, he built his own infrastructure.
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  Speaker 2: Carter G.
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  Speaker 1: Woodson founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life
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  Speaker 1: and History, the Journal of Negro History, and Negro History Week,
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  Speaker 1: and it was placed deliberately in February to align with
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  Speaker 1: Frederick Douglas and Abraham Lincoln's birthday, much to the dismay
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: of many black people like.
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  Speaker 2: To say, hey, give us the shortest money. It's still
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  Speaker 2: try to spider us.
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  Speaker 1: Carter G Woodson picked that month specific. That wasn't a coincidence,
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  Speaker 1: That was chess. He knew schools wouldn't teach it, textbooks
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  Speaker 1: wouldn't print it, and America dang shure wouldn't protect it.
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  Speaker 1: So he said, fine, we'll preserve it ourselves. And here's
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  Speaker 1: the part that I didn't know, and maybe you didn't either.
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  Speaker 1: Before Harvard, before the PhD, before the books and the awards,
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  Speaker 1: Carter G.
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  Speaker 2: Woodson was a coal miner in West Virginia. He would
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  Speaker 2: read to.
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  Speaker 1: The other miners about politics, about tariffs, about the gold standard.
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  Speaker 1: I know they was out there, confused as hell on
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  Speaker 1: not understanding the word. Cardig g Woodson was out there
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  Speaker 1: time bout, but he was learning from men who had
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  Speaker 1: survived the Civil War, men who told him about their
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  Speaker 1: trials and their battles for freedom and equality. The man
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  Speaker 1: didn't even start high school till he was twenty, and
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  Speaker 1: he finished in two years because he had already taught himself.
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  Speaker 1: Then Berea College, then the University of Chicago, then Harvard,
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  Speaker 1: where his own advisor believed and wrote that the Negro
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  Speaker 1: was inferior.
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  Speaker 2: Carter G.
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  Speaker 1: Woodson earned his degree anyway, second black man to get
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  Speaker 1: a PhD from Harvard, and the only person in American
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  Speaker 1: history whose parents were both enslaved to earn a PhD
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: in history. Rewind that and listen to that again, the
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  Speaker 1: only one. And when W. E. B. D. Boys, the
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: first black man to earn the Harvard doctor, saw what
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: Carter G Woodson had built, he called Negro History Week
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  Speaker 1: the greatest single achievement of the Harlem Renaissance era. Now
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  Speaker 1: fast forward to twenty twenty six, one hundred years later,
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  Speaker 1: and black folks still being ignored completely or mentioned once
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  Speaker 1: briefly as a problem. But we still celebrating what a
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  Speaker 1: coal miner built in his spare time. And I didn't know.
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: Maybe you didn't either, I didn't know. No doo
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  Speaker 2: H