Montgomery Bus Boycott, Bessemer, prisons – Class struggle then and now By Monica Moorehead posted on February 16, 2021 Fifty years after the end of the U.S. Civil War — and during the height of horrific lynchings of Black people in the Deep South by KKK terror — the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History was founded in 1915 by Dr. Carter Woodson and Rev. Jesse E. Moorland to research and promote the individual contributions of people of African descent, both inside the U.S. and throughout the African diaspora. The ASNLH launched a national “Negro History Week” in February 1926. Fifty years later in 1976, due to the influence of the Civil Rights Movement, this “Week” officially evolved into Black History Month in the U.S.