(Carter G. Woodson, looking particularly unsuited to tolerate bullshit)
I’m reading Pero Dagbovie’s The Early Black History Movement, Carter G. Woodson, and Lorenzo Johnson Greene right now, and it includes some of Woodson’s correspondence with Greene regarding a collection of essays a group of his “disciples” were putting together to honor him on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, which he founded. Apparently Woodson was none too please to learn of some of the names that would be contributing to said collection:
The purpose of this letter, however, is to write you about the book of essays which you outlined for me sometime ago. I have never taken the matter very seriously because some of the persons called upon to contribute know very little about history and cannot write correctly in the English language. I would seriously object to a volume dedicated to the undersigned, unless he has a chance to see that the work be published in proper style and conforming with the rules of modern historiography. I do not care to be put to shame on the occasion of our twenty-fifth anniversary.
Damn. That hurts.
