Carter G. Woodson went to the Philippines in 1903 to help establish a new school system there  (The first group to do this traveled aboard the U.S.S. Thomas and were therefore known as Thomasites.) Woodson, a Black educator, saw how the books and subjects that Filipino kids were being taught were completely outside of their own circumstances, their own story. The Filipinos’ lives and landscapes were excluded from the books and curriculum written and designed by white Americans.