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George Mason University professor Wendi Manuel-Scott warned against censorship and historical erasure during a Black History celebration at Woodson High, urging students to remain curious and challenge attempts to control what they learn.

Manuel-Scott, a professor of Integrative Studies and History, delivered the keynote address by video because she had a class to teach that evening. Her remarks centered on Carter G. Woodson and his belief that education could help people resist oppression.

Woodson, whose parents had been enslaved, recognized that many histories—including those of Black Americans, Indigenous people, Asian Americans and women—were being suppressed, Manuel-Scott said. Rather than simply studying the past, he created institutions to preserve it.

He founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History in 1915. In 1926, he established Negro History Week, which became the foundation for Black History Month.

Manuel-Scott described teaching as an act that has historically demanded courage. Enslaved people risked their lives to teach others to read, while Black educators and community members built schools during Reconstruction that were later burned by people who feared an educated Black population.

Those educators understood that learning should advance freedom instead of obedience and control, she said.

Woodson continued writing books, building institutions and supporting Black teachers and students despite racial terrorism, legal segregation and systematic exclusion. Manuel-Scott connected his work to periods when history is sanitized and past violence is erased rather than confronted.

She encouraged students to think critically, examine archival records and scholarly sources, and read books that challenge their assumptions and generate new questions.

“I hope Woodson’s legacy inspires you to never ever stop asking questions, because your power is in your curiosity,” she said.

Manuel-Scott also urged the audience to view the school’s renaming as more than a ceremony, calling it a lifelong commitment to education and intellectual freedom.

“If you free their mind, there are no limits to what they can do, be or imagine,” she said. “So let’s free some minds and build a future worthy of Woodson’s name.”