Carter Reads the Newspaper
by Deborah Hopkinson (Author) and Don Tate (Illustrator)
Booktalk: As the father of Black History Month, he spent his life introducing others to the history of his people. Carter G. Woodson was born to two formerly enslaved people ten years after the end of the Civil War. Though his father could not read, he believed in being an informed citizen. So Carter read the newspaper to him every day. When he was still a teenager, Carter went to work in the coal mines. There he met a man named Oliver Jones, and Oliver did something important: he asked Carter not only to read to him and the other miners, but also research and find more information on the subjects that interested them.
Snippet: At Harvard, so the story goes, one of Carter’s professors said that Black people had no history.
Carter remembered his father’s pride, his mother’s courage, and Oliver’s determination to read. He remembered reading the newspaper.
Carter spoke up. “No people lacked a history,” he said. The professor challenged Carter to prove him wrong.
For the rest of his life, Carter did just that.
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