After graduating from Dickinson College with his Bachelors of Arts degree, Woodard went on to earn his Master’s and PhD at the University of Pennsylvania.

He became involved in the civil rights movement and became a Black power activist.  Woodard went on to become a journalist, economic advisor, urban planner and community developer in Newark. Woodard began teaching in 1968 when he established Newark’s Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) Liberation School. With Jeanne Theoharis and Robyn Spencer-Antoine, he curated Conversations in Black Freedom Studies at the Schomburg in Harlem, New York.

Woodard held the Esther Raushenbush Professorship in History at Sarah Lawrence College; served on the Board of Directors of the Urban History Association; edited newspapers and cultural journals as well as Black Power & Black Arts Movement archives; directed an international news service and a radio news program; curated library, museum and college programs; and published news and scholarly articles as well as seven books, including these: A Nation within a Nation: Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) and Black Power Politics; The Making of the New Ark; The Black Power Movement: Amiri Baraka from Black Arts to Black Radicalism, Freedom North, Groundwork and Want to Start a Revolution: Radical Women in the Black Freedom Struggle?, and Black Power 50.
 
Woodard is currently a Professor of History, Public Policy and Africana Studies at Sarah Lawrence College.