(CNN)Do black people have a history? There have always been doubters. In 1843 Noah Webster, said by some to be the founding father of American scholarship and education, was asked by black minister Amos Beman to share "some account of the origin of the African race." Of Africans, Webster replied, "there is no history, and there can be none." To be outside of history in Webster's view, was to be in a permanent state of "barbarism," without the benefit of Europe's civilizing influence. Webster's view is no throwback. Take the 2007 example of then-French President Nicolas Sarkozy who, during a state visit to Senegal, remarked: "The tragedy of Africa is that the African has not fully entered into history." Sarkozy deemed Africa a place unaffected by change and without a capacity for progress, and thus beyond historical analysis.
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Historian Carter G. Woodson created Black History Week to highlight the history and achievements of African Americans
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Some argue that relegating African American history to one week or month per year is too constraining
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Martha S. Jones: The month ensures "that understandings of the black past extend beyond ivy-covered towers"
@placeholder's goal was to make history available to teachers, students and the public.