Louisiana State University Press, 1993

The frontispiece and dust jacket of Jacqueline Goggin’s Carter G. Woodson show a photographic portrait of Woodson identified merely as “in middle age.” He looks past the camera, mouth set firmly in the next best thing to a scowl. The photo is retouched, but a less formal shot in the book’s interior reveals what the portrait conceals, a line etched deeply between the eyes of a man of concentration who was used to beating long odds, starting with his education. Goggin says that Carter G. Woodson was the only American holder of a doctorate in history whose parents had been slaves.