The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921

This volume of The Journal of Negro History, published in 1921 under the pioneering direction of Carter G. Woodson, stands as a foundational work in African American historiography. Woodson, the visionary historian who would later found Black History Month, dedicated this journal to correcting the historical record that had long ignored or distorted the Black American experience. The opening essay, "Fifty Years of Negro Citizenship as Qualified by the United States Supreme Court," offers a meticulous legal analysis of how the highest court in the land systematically eroded the citizenship rights promised to Black Americans after the Civil War. Woodson documents specific Supreme Court decisions that enabled racial discrimination, revealing the gap between constitutional guarantees and legal reality. This is not merely historical scholarship it is a protest rendered in scholarship, a refusal to let Black contributions and suffering vanish from the national memory. For readers interested in primary sources on the early civil rights movement, the legal foundations of segregation, or the intellectual origins of Black History Month, this volume provides indispensable documentation from the period itself.