For Arc I of my We Been Knew series, I chose to begin with The Mis-Education of the Negro by Carter G. Woodson — the scholar who founded Negro History Week in 1926, which later became Black History Month. As we celebrate the 100th anniversary of that founding, it felt necessary to return to the source.

In this first episode of my We Been Knew series, I walk through Jarvis R. Givens’ introduction and Chapters 1–3, where Woodson lays out the real problem in Black education: not just lack of access, but the moral and ideological substance of what is taught. He critiques Reconstruction-era industrial training, the limits of classical education, the myth that labor efficiency equals liberation, and the deliberate erasure of African intellectual history.

As I read, I trace the throughline into my own life: elite schooling, corporate mobility without power, assimilation as survival, and the moment when the version of “success” I was taught collapsed.

Woodson names how miseducation conditions people to drift away from their own truth. A century later, the patterns are still recognizable.

If you’ve ever wondered why doing everything “right” still felt misaligned, this conversation might explain why.

Keywords: Carter G. Woodson, Black History Month 100th anniversary, The Mis-Education of the Negro, Black education, Reconstruction, industrial education, self-determination, psychological conditioning, sovereignty, corporate assimilation.

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