Beautiful Ventures

Thank you to brother Kipper Jones for creating this space to celebrate the legacy and mourn the loss of our forever brother Malcolm-Jamal Warner:

https://www.facebook.com/share/1ArCpjrNn3/?mibextid=wwXIfr

Honoring Malcolm Jamal Warner: A Journey Through Grief, Healing, and Legacy Honoring my brother and discussing grief and healing with Dr. Ed Garnes.

Black History Month is not now, nor shall ever be…”on pause”.

In fact, let’s run back some of the history of its founder, Dr. Carter G. Woodson:

Carter G. Woodson was born in 1875 to illiterate parents who were former slaves. His schooling was erratic. He helped out on the family farm when he was a young boy and as a teen worked in the coal mines of West Virginia to help support his father’s meager income. Hungry for education, he was largely self-taught and had mastered common school subjects by the age of 17. Entering high school at the age of 20, Woodson completed his diploma in less than two years.

He worked as a teacher and a school principal before obtaining a bachelor’s degree in literature from Berea College in Kentucky. He then went on to earn a master’s degree from the University of Chicago, and became the second Black American, after W.E.B. Du Bois, to obtain a Ph.D. degree from Harvard University. He joined the faculty of Howard University, eventually serving as Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.

After being barred from attending American Historical Association conferences despite being a dues-paying member, Woodson believed that the white-dominated historical profession had little interest in Black history. He saw African-American contributions “overlooked, ignored, and even suppressed by the writers of history textbooks and the teachers who use them.”

In 1926, he launched Negro History Week in the second week of February to coincide with the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. It’s been celebrated as month of commemoration every year since 1976. The concept was later expanded into Black History Month. He fervently believed that Black people should be proud of their heritage and all Americans should understand the largely overlooked achievements of Black Americans. (~adapted from ’s website).

Beautiful Ventures celebrates and centers Black, narrative entrepreneurs like Dr. Carter G. Woodson. We exist ensure the legacies of storytellers in the tradition of Woodson whose works affirm the humanity of all Black people - 24/7/365.