An inspiring portrait of an overlooked pioneer in Black history and American archaeology
The First Black Archaeologist reveals the untold story of a pioneering African American classical scholar, teacher, community leader, and missionary. Born into slavery in rural Georgia, John Wesley Gilbert (1863-1923) gained national prominence in the early 1900s, but his accomplishments are little known today. Using evidence from archives across the U.S. and Europe, from contemporary publications, and from newly discovered documents, this book chronicles, for the first time, Gilbert's remarkable journey. As we follow Gilbert from the segregated public schools of Augusta, Georgia, to the lecture halls of Brown University, to his hiring as the first black faculty member of Augusta's Paine Institute, and through his travels in Greece, western Europe, and the Belgian Congo, we learn about the development of African American intellectual and religious culture, and about the enormous achievements of an entire generation of black students and educators.
Readers interested in the early development of American archaeology in Greece will find an entirely new perspective here, as Gilbert was one of the first Americans of any race to do archaeological work in Greece. Those interested in African American history and culture will gain an invaluable new perspective on a leading yet hidden figure of the late 1800s and early 1900s, whose life and work touched many different aspects of the African American experience.
Industry Reviews
"Lee (history, Univ. of California, Santa Barbara) has written a comprehensive, impeccably researched biography of John Wesley Gilbert, the first Black American archaeologist. Lee explains that Gilbert was much more than just an archaeologist: he was also an educator, a Methodist minister and missionary to the Congo, and the first Black professor of Paine College, founded by both Black and white Methodists in 1882." -- L. D. Baker, CHOICE
"A comprehensive, impeccably researched biography of John Wesley Gilbert, the first Black American archaeologist.... Gilbert's life demonstrates the diversity of thought in the years just preceding the New Negro Movement." -- CHOICE
"Rescues a pioneering Black scholar from obscurity in this intriguing biography.... Lee meticulously pieces together the fragmentary records of Gilbert's life to highlight his extraordinary commitment to 'interracial cooperation' at a time of worsening racism in the South. The result is an informative addition to the history of Black education in America" -- Publishers Weekly
"The First Black Archaeologist is a riveting narrative, weaving threads of post-Reconstruction racism, conflicts, and religious commitment into a revealing tapestry of personal success and interracial cooperation." -- Bishop Othal Hawthorne Lakey, Retired, Christian Methodist Episcopal Church
"In the 1885 inaugural issue of The American Journal of Archaeology, John Izard Middleton was hailed by Charles Eliot Norton as 'the first American classical archaeologist.' Now thanks to John W. I. Lee's deeply researched and beautifully written biography, we can learn about the first African American to work in the same field and publish in the same journal. This was John Wesley Gilbert whose life is an index to his era." -- Michele Valerie Ronnick,
Wayne State University
"A revelatory read. John Lee's well-written, meticulously researched biography of the largely forgotten Black archaeologist, John Wesley Gilbert, shows that Gilbert, usually known for his trip as a missionary to the Congo under Belgian rule, was one of the most important figures of Greek archaeology in early-twentieth-century America. Lee shows us a more nuanced, transgressive Gilbert, whose mastery of the Greek language, archaeology, and classical education
made him an American anomaly. Lee's biography excels most in its almost daily tracking of this fascinating New Negro, as he trips through Greece, the Congo, and the minefields of Jim Crow higher
education in America. In the process, Lee creates a template for studying Black scholars in terms of the disciplines they mastered, not simply the disciplines that have come to dominate Black Studies." -- Jeffrey C. Stewart, author of the Pulitzer Prize- and National Book Award-winning biography The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke
"Lee meticulously pieces together the fragmentary records of Gilbert>'s life to highlight his extraordinary commitment to "interracial cooperation" at a time of worsening racism in the South. The result is an informative addition to the history of Black education in America." --Publisher's Weekly
"Lee masterfully reconnects Gilbert with his eraELand cohesively argues for 'the centrality of both Classics and Christianity in the black intellectual tradition'... A significantly interesting study, The First Black Archaeologist goes far beyond...earlier work by connecting Gilbert to a religious and an intellectual lineage, as well as to a community heritage in Augusta and at Paine College." -- Ricardo O.Howell, Journal of Southern History
